Mother Nature will always win. Mother Nature has always won. Man can either "mitigate", "delay" or "adapt" -- but man cannot stop geological change.
Those who feel man can control nature are also the same group who blame mankind for "environmental change". Left to it's own devices, completely absent the effects of man, the earth will still transform and change. Humans, by nature, are very conceited and shortsighted. Man only looks at things in terms of 100's of years. The earth, on the other hand, operates on timescales of 1000's, 10,000's and 1,000,000's of years and has no capacity for conceit. Any impact man creates on his small slice of the environment today is meaningless to the earth's timeless cycle of change. New Orleans is only a minuscule speck in the earth's history.
The problem again is that this not all "mother nature" its "mother nature" plus alot of man interference thats a part of it.