Agreement on the mismanagement, I grew up in NOLA. High school taught me that pretty much 50% of Louisiana's land comes from the Mississippi jumping its banks a

Agreement on the mismanagement, I grew up in NOLA. High school taught me that pretty much 50% of Louisiana's land comes from the Mississippi jumping its banks and dumping silt into a new area for a while. Once you have cities lining a river's banks there's a strong economic pressure to try and keep the river where it is, despite the slow loss of land to erosion. I don't think it's an either-or, though. The delta's generally pretty close to sea level (NOLA averages about 5ft below IIRC) as is, and when the seas rise, that means more Gulf and less Louisiana Delta. It'll just vanish quicker because we haven't been letting the river refresh the land for a few centuries. Ultimately it becomes a question of how much money anyone is willing to dump into this; I wouldn't be that surprised to see the city I was born and raised in become either New Atlantis or New Venice in my lifetime.