Americans have learned a hard lesson this week. No, they probably haven’t. But they should have. Had America taken protective environmental measures, New Orleans might not be under water right now. I’m not talking about Kyoto.

I’m talking about America’s Wetlands. The campaign to save Coastal Louisiana has been going on for some time now, but it has largely been ignored. Ironically, the university where I teach joined the campaign just this semester. We were a little too late. Another great irony is that our recent energy bill allotted us 1 billion dollars for coastal restoration. It was a little too late.

Did we care that America’s Wetlands was the home of 79 threatened or endangered animal and plant species? Did we care that it was the winter habitat of 5 million birds? Did we care that America’s Wetlands housed 95% of all marine species in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know what kind of damage Katrina did to the coast because the media only seems to care about New Orleans. I imagine it’s not pretty. No, we should have cared for our environment, but we’re Americans.

We do care about money, so let’s talk figures. More than 30% of the nation’s oil goes through these wetlands, the home of the US Strategic Oil Reserve. The US owes 30% of its fisheries catch to America’s Wetlands. And yet, we’ve let twenty-four square miles of wetlands disappear every year, in addition to the 1,900 already lost…before Katrina. The No. 1 port system in the world (by tonnage) is now useless. I’m sure Shell will be laying off a good number of its 4,000 off-shore employess. And so much for the hopes of those businesses that hoped to grow 30-40% this year due to the 1 billion dollars for coastal restoration.

One thing I kept hearing from our coastal advocates was that we should pay now so that we wouldn’t have to pay later. Well, later is here. And the cost is astronomical.