After the recent series of scary articles the local newspaper ran on the disappearing coastline of this state and the urgent need for action, a citizen wrote the editor to ask the obvious question: What can one person do?

Steve Saucier said he is a fisherman who sees with his own eyes what is happening to the land south of here. He drives his boat over what used to be high ground. He studies the comparative photos showing what the coastal wetlands used to look like and how they appear now, and he is frightened. But he’s only one person, not a government agency, and what can he possibly do?

The editor responded Monday, and admitted that the natural reaction to this overwhelming situation is to feel helpless. “But as we have seen since Hurricane Katrina, individuals banding together can accomplish the unthinkable.” Then, he (or she) gave several examples.

Pre-K, South Louisiana was protected from the water by levees which in turn were overseen (that was the theory at any rate) by a multiplicity of levee boards. Every parish had its levee boards, and some had more than one. And if anyone had stood up and called for these tiny agencies of political patronage to be consolidated, he would have been laughed out of town.

But Post-Katrina, citizens demanded consolidation and that’s what we now have.

Pre-K, the state legislature let New Orleans alone with its odd system of seven tax assessors for the one parish. This created the most bizarre situations where similar houses across the street from each other, but in different zones, were assessed by totally different standards and the owners paid vastly different tax bills. The assessors seemed to inherit their jobs, some being passed down in the same family for generations.

Post-K, the citizens called for a stop to this monkey-business and a state constitutional amendment was passed to create a single assessor’s office, the way the rest of the world operates.

In the same way, says our editor, citizens can attack the problem of coastal erosion. Speak up, band together, get to work, and refuse to be silenced.

The Louisiana State Legislature is discussing (and cussing) how to spend a budget surplus of $827 million. Lawmakers need to hear that we want a hunk of that devoted to coastal restoration. Metairie Representative Steve Scalise is pushing to set aside $100 million for this purpose, just for starters. The experts say we have ten years at the most to reverse the deterioration of our coastline, otherwise the process becomes irreversible and we can forget it and go back to worrying about the latest celebrity meltdown.

One of the best comic strips in the paper is one that took a while to grow on me. “Brewster Rockit” is tightly drawn to look serious, in the style of a Buck Rogers or Steve Canyon, but is a complete spoof on us and our lives. In Monday’s strip, space aliens are announcing to Brewster that, “Our geo-thermostat controls the temperature of the earth. We have turned the setting to ‘global warming.'” As a result, the alien says, “The polar ice caps will melt, flooding your coastal cities.” Our hero protests, “People will notice and react.” The alien replies, “Don’t count on it.” In the last panel, a businessman and woman are standing at a bus stop. He’s reading a newspaper. Neither seems to notice they are standing in water up to their chests as she looks over his shoulder and asks, “What’s the latest on Anna Nicole’s baby?”

Cultural historians will tell you that’s not a joke, that it really happens. In the last months of the 1930s when Europe was being dismantled by the Nazis and the gas ovens were being prepared for millions of Jews, Americans for the most part closed their minds to such depressing reports. They turned on their radios to hear comedies and big bands and went to movies to see Fred and Ginger dancing the night away. Admittedly, these were the days of the Great Depression and everyone had worries enough of his own–how to feed his family, for one–but the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century was playing out before their eyes and they consistently turned away.

In the turbulent Sixties when our cities were on fire and Americans were dying in Southeast Asia and our leaders were being assassinated, back at home we were watching Andy and Opie and dreaming of times and places that never were. (The next time you watch an Andy Griffith rerun, ask yourself if those wonderful people seemed to have any idea of what was happening in the outside world. The edges of their world began at Mount Pilot and ended at Raleigh.)

These were the days when Gilligan’s Island and the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were topping the charts–all of them fantasies about getting away from the stresses of real life and pretending another world into existence.

No one is against a little escapism. That’s what a nap is, and who doesn’t benefit from an occasional siesta. However, it’s possible to sleep through a revolution…or a catastrophe.

To our many friends in other states who read this little blog, we might point out that this is not merely a problem for the foolish people in South Louisiana who “choose to live beneath sea level.” We’re talking about a vital piece of the United States coastline, which, as it disappears, will affect the quality of life in a hundred ways for much of the nation.

We cannot afford to dismiss this as not affecting us. “It’s only a fire in the tail section,” said the first class passengers. “Nothing to concern ourselves about.”

“Just a little iceberg that cut a gash below the waterline,” they said on the Titanic. “But we’re way up here in the ballroom where the lights are bright and the music is gay.”

You and I are some of the first people in the history of this planet to see the world as it really appears. We routinely see satellite photos of our spinning earth with its bands of clouds and expanses of ocean and land. What we do not see are dotted lines and colored patches indicating borders of nations and divisions within our people. We are a small planet in a massive universe and we have an incredible task: to take care of home base.

One of the most frightening verses in the Bible is Psalm 115:16. “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to the sons of men.”

I hope it’s not too late to say, “Uh, Father–we’ll be needing your help with earth. And we hope we haven’t messed it up beyond repair.”

It’s no stretch to say that the physical problems we’re having with this planet have a spiritual basis. Because of man’s self-centeredness and short-sightedness–what Scriptures call ‘sin’–we’re where we are. And considering that each resident of this planet is afflicted with the same disease, neither is it a stretch to see how the world’s problems could escalate so quickly to such proportions.

I recall an incident from the 1960s when the Georgia Baptists met in their annual conference and talked about the problems of racism and prejudice. “The real cause is ‘sin,'” they said in a resolution, and called on people to repent. Ralph McGill, the prize-winning editor of the Atlanta paper, lambasted the Baptists for that. The world is exploding all around us, going to hades in the proverbial hand-basket, as the saying goes, and these narrow-minded pharisees see the problem as “sin.” He showed no mercy, took no prisoners.

The Baptists made lots of mistakes and got lots of things wrong. But they were right that day. The selfishness of the human heart is the real culprit in our world. And for that, man needs a Savior, someone who can rescue him from his destructive ways.

The best news this planet ever received is that there is indeed such a Savior: the Lord Jesus Christ. And the most urgent aspect of that news is this: He’s the only one; there’s no other.

One more thing. If all of this is true, then it should go without saying that the best friends earth ever had for its restoration and renewal–the best advocates this deteriorating Louisiana coastline could every possibly have–would be born-again Christians.

If the problem is sin, and the solution is the Savior, then the “saved” are the ones with their act together who are finally able to be healers in this world.

You would think.

(Postscript. Wednesday morning, March 14.)

After ending the above article early Tuesday morning, I said a brief prayer committing it to the Father. Later in the day, one of the editorial page editors of the Times-Picayune called to say she wants to use excerpts from it for an op-ed column to be run in the paper soon.

She had previously invited me to write such a column but every attempt I’d made had ended poorly and I’d given up on the idea.

Obviously, we’re pleased to be able to connect with so many people from every walk of life who read our daily newspaper.

So, thank you, Father.)