Throughout all of the coverage I've read on Hurricane Katrina, I kept thinking of the Sunday School lesson I heard a very long time ago about the wise man and the foolish man . . . you know, the one about building your house upon a rock instead of on the sand.
And I also think of how insurance rates--for our cars and households--are going to go up because of foolish people who build in flood plains, who live on coasts and rivers, who put up skyscrapers along fault zones, and so on. Do you doubt that your insurance rates will go up? Please don't be so naive as to think they won't. Someone has to pay the price for all the rich people who build homes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars on America's vanishing coastlines. That someone is usually America's middle class.
Maybe we have too large a population and not enough safe places for all of the people to live. Or maybe our architects and engineers need to learn from catastrophes like Katrina and create buildings that are structurally sounder. I don't know the answers, but I do know there are lessons to be learned from the destruction and despair, and I hope more people--especially people in high places--will take heed of them. Sadly, I have little faith anymore that the fat cats who hold elected and appointed offices in the U.S. federal and state governments will do what is right.
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