Watching Ken Burns’s film on the Dust Bowl recently, I wondered whether we could learn anything from the government’s response to that earlier environmental disaster. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was counseled by some advisers to abandon much of the Dust Bowl region; they argued that it was never meant to be farmed or settled. Ultimately some areas were restored to their natural grassland state. But Roosevelt also envisioned families staying on the land, and he moved quickly and decisively to confront the causes of the topsoil erosion: he sent crews to plant millions of trees as windbreaks and began coaxing reluctant farmers toward fundamental changes in the ways they worked their fields.

Hurricane Sandy has presented us with an opportunity to take stock of what kind of communities are viable and sustainable along a fragile stretch of coast. And the best route may very well be to rebuild in some communities while restoring other land to its natural state in order to create a shield against future catastrophes.

Read more at The New York Times.