If you follow me on social media (I’m on X and Facebook, specifically), you’ll know that I’ve been upsetting certain people with some rather pointed words in discussing the value and propriety of SpaceX’s planned $100 billion capital investment to build Starbase Louisiana in Vermilion Parish south of Pecan Island.

We’ve discussed the project a good bit here at The Hayride – here’s a quick list of the posts we’ve had on that topic.

If you’ve been following it here, you’ll know this is the largest capital investment in Louisiana’s history, and it runs the total economic development pipeline up to $260 billion, according to Louisiana Economic Development (depending on how you assess that figure, it might be closer to $300 billion). As we noted, having SpaceX doing rocket assembly, fuel manufacturing, potentially satellite manufacturing, and lots of other functions on site at Starbase Louisiana is very likely to turn that facility into an economic powerhouse which energizes not just Vermilion Parish but all of Southwest Louisiana, with major economic effects felt as far away as Beaumont and New Orleans, if not further.

Elon Musk is talking about 30 Starship launches a day, and using Starbase Louisiana for moon launches which will lead to moon colonies. And then on to Mars. This makes Louisiana’s coast suddenly one of the most consequential and valuable pieces of real estate on Planet Earth.

And the first thing out of Musk’s mouth as Starbase Louisiana was announced was that his first priority was to shore up the disappearing coastline.

Because of course it is. Building Starbase along the Vermilion Parish coast means there is now a $100 billion asset which needs to be protected.

I mention this because there is a contingent out there – I wouldn’t call them large by any means, but they’re loud – of people who style themselves as environmentalists and stewards of the marshland in Vermilion Parish absolutely bawling and caterwauling about SpaceX locating at this site.

And these people need to be answered as loudly as they’re screaming.

No, you are not morally superior standing for the bats, ducks, crabs or whooping cranes and against your fellow human beings, some 10,000 or more of whom stand to get very lucrative, life-changing jobs which will make for prosperity for their families and the communities around them. You might be sanctimonious, but you aren’t moral.

Protecting the environment? Really? What environment is that? For 30 years you’ve lamented the fact that the Gulf of America is not-so-slowly devouring Louisiana’s coastline and turning that marshland you say you love so much into open water. And what did you do about it? Put a “Save Our Coast” sticker on the back window of your Subaru to go with the dozen others?

Well, fine. Now we’ve brought in the world’s richest man, who got that way because he’s also the world’s greatest problem solver, and he has 100 billion reasons to join the fight to save the coast.

This is literally the miracle you say you want and you’re whining about it. And you want me to be polite and not call you a Luddite and an idiot?

Sorry. I’m a lot more convicted in my opinion of you than you are in your opinion of Elon.

There is no future for that marshland without SpaceX. Nobody else is coming to pump economic resources into saving that property. Even ExxonMobil, who held that land before SpaceX got hold of it, didn’t have much in the way of resources dedicated to protect it. Why? Because they weren’t doing anything with it that needed protection from the Gulf.

You’re complaining that somebody is going to build industrial infrastructure on your pristine coastal marshland which is becoming part of the Gulf of America in real time. You like Mother Nature so much, but what you don’t realize is that she is eminently nasty and vengeful and hates your guts. Mother Nature wants to take that coastal marsh from you and give it to the sharks.

And Elon wants to keep it so he can do business on it. And to make that work he’s going to have to keep the coastline all around it, too.

And you think that makes him the bad guy.

The typical profile of the screamers is these are the folks who gave us John Bel Edwards as governor for eight years. During that time, Louisiana scored almost no economic development wins at all. Louisiana was utterly moribund. We lost more people than we gained in every single year Edwards was governor, and major companies like CenturyLink and Smoothie King skedaddled for greener pastures. Now that it’s been shown that Louisiana can attract outside capital investment, they want to concoct reasons to oppose it and claim this is a corrupt bargain that Jeff Landry, or the local politicians in Vermilion Parish, have made with Elon Musk.

We’re supposed to credit them for their civic spirit? Is that it?

And then there are the people claiming that they’ve lived and worked that land for generations and that it’s sacred to them, and SpaceX is coming to desecrate it. That the rockets are going to destroy the crabbing and the duck hunting along that coast.

I would submit that the crabs don’t know from rockets. I don’t think they’ll care. As for the ducks, how prevalent do you think they’d be when that marsh becomes open water? The ducks would be gone anyway. And we don’t even know that they’ll be gone.

Are the rockets noisy? Yes. The future is noisy. That’s why there’s a significant buffer around the core Starbase campus. People in Pecan Island will probably hear those rockets taking off, and before long it’ll just be background noise like cicadas and car traffic on Highway 82.

And it’ll be the sound of money, because the Airbnb value of those fishing camps in Pecan Island, not to mention that of the land itself, will explode.

People will come from all over the world to watch those rockets take off, and they will pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per night to stay and watch them. This will be something nobody else in the world will have to offer, and it will make for more money than folks in Pecan Island can even imagine. You own land that yesterday was all but worthless and today it will give you generational wealth to sell or even rent.

When it isn’t even established that this is going to impinge on the primitive lifestyle these complainers say they want. Again, there is no proof the crabbing in Vermilion Parish will go to seed.

Will there be a lot more traffic on the roads? I would imagine so. I’d also imagine there will be a whole lot more roads.

And again, this facility is going to support at the very minimum 10,000 new high-paying jobs in the area. It will be an economic driver that will bring thousands of Louisianans home from the diaspora, as well as skilled and creative people from all over the country.

So those people preening about how they’ve worked that land for generations can now answer this question: how many in your family had to move to Houston or Midland because there was no work for them? Well, maybe they can move back. Is it OK for somebody to invest $100 billion in your community now?

The ones who are the most fun are the people who don’t even own any land in Vermilion Parish but want to whine about the decline of the crabbing and duck hunting. No skin in the game at all, but they’re going to take a dump on the largest economic development win in state history anyway.

The truth is, the vast majority of the people in Vermilion Parish, not to mention the rest of southwest Louisiana, are ecstatic about landing this game-changing economic development win. It’s just a loud, but small, minority who want to complain.

And no, I’m not talking about the people who are asking questions about how this is going to work. That’s perfectly valid. We’re talking here about the doom-and-gloom gang, the Citizens Against Virtually Everything fools, who immediately began screaming about environmental devastation and political corruption with no evidence at all to back those howls.

I’m howling back at you. You’re a bad person. So there.