If such ability existed I would be adamantly opposed to it. The fact that rural areas are filled with a lesser population than the bigger cities does not make those people’s lives and possessions any less valuable. I live in St. Bernard Parish, a small out of the way strip of land just to the east of New Orleans, stretching to the Gulf of Mexico. Our parish was absolutely devastated when Hurricane Katrina turned east of the city. And if a major city had the power to divert a hurricane away to a neighboring parish or county, then I am sure that New Orleans would send every storm our way. And I am sure that many other major cities along the coast would do the same thing.
Ability such as this would surely be used the wrong way, as there would be no right way to use it. It would cause fear to spread throughout every coastal community bordering a large city. And also a sort of invincibility would develop within the larger cities population. The smaller towns would be continuously destroyed each hurricane season while the big cities remain unharmed. This would eventually cause the smaller towns to catch on and begin to overpopulate the big cities just for the pure fact of safety. And with cities all along the coast tripling and quadrupling all at once anarchy would run rampant. The homeless population in all of these cities would sky rocket as not enough jobs and homes would be available to the incoming citizens from the outlying counties and parishes. Cities such as New Orleans, Miami and even New York would begin to break down into utter chaos. But that may be taking things to the extreme.
So, as I said before, I believe this would be a very bad idea and would never wish for ability like this to be created. I do not know how such ability could be created but believe we should never try. If anything I think we should work towards a way of weakening hurricanes from the inside. But logically I think the only way we can really protect ourselves is by building our coastal barriers stronger, our levees strengthened and marsh lands revived. This is the only real way to protect ourselves, if only temporarily, from Mother Nature’s wrath. We may not be able to stop a wrath such as hers but we can at least delay the inevitable.
