The last time I wrote about this region of the country it was the happiest day it had seen in the five years of recovering from the worst natural disaster to ever touch American soil. It was the night after the New Orleans Saints went home as Super Bowl champions. Watching New Orleanians celebrate their Super Bowl win was like watching the city being reborn again into a new life as if Katrina had never happened. Now, five years after hurricane Katrina, the people of that region are threatened with yet another disaster, devastating their livelihood and destroying the marshes along the coast that protect their state. The Gulf Oil spill has opened up a whole world of discussion. It’s forced us to ask ourselves, should we still be doing this? Is this disaster what it’s going to take to get us to begin to move forward from our traditional energy methods to a new, safer method?

An oil-stained pelican leaves its nest as oil washes ashore on an island that is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as well at terns, gulls and roseated spoonbills in Barataria Bay just inside the the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, May 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Brian Williams and the NBC Nightly News crew returned to Louisiana for the 27th time for the Tuesday and Wednesday night broadcasts. While I’ve already been greatly appreciating Brian and the crew’s focus on the Gulf, Rachel Maddow also held her show tonight in New Orleans, Louisiana. Before watching, I did not realize how much the city of New Orleans depended on the health of the marshes of Louisiana’s coastline. To think of what a hurricane could do to that city without the marshes protection of the coastline is staggeringly devastating. It’s because of that, mostly, that my thoughts and prayers continue to pour out for the Gulf Coast. We cannot let this happen again. Not to New Orleans, and not to anyone living along the coast. Something short that Rachel said stood out to me. Something like this: “This isn’t some hippie crusade to save the cute baby gators, this is the survival of a piece of our country.”

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