The gas prices will be bad, but what about all those people trapped in the bowl? How on earth do we recover from that?
We don't recover from it if we're smart. NO is sinking because it's built on sediment. Without the river depositing more sediment in and around NO, it started to sink. We've held back the Mississippi in an artificial course for decades. We've paid a price for that. Perhaps it's time to stop looking at the short term benefits and look at the long term costs of our actions.