We need to discuss two words today: Hope and courage. In almost 40 years of covering the state's coastal crisis, "hope" is a word I've seldom been able to write. There were decades when the state refused to even acknowledge we had problem. There were political leaders who refused to address the forces responsible. And there was a population that refused to get involved. So it was little wonder during that time the Gulf of Mexico moved within eye-shot of our major cities, or that the groundwork was laid for a disaster named Katrina.

But last week, finally, we got hope. It's called "Louisiana's Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast" -- aka the 2012 Master Plan. It's a $50 billion blueprint for keeping our starving, sinking deltas livable in 50 years.

The plan is available on the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration website. It's required reading if you work or play here. You'll find hope in its 165 pages for the following reasons: It draws a long needed "line in the marsh," proposing what we will try to save, try to rebuild and what we must let go.

The importance of that one accomplishment cannot be overstated. As author and levee authority member John Barry has pointed out, the biggest obstacle to solving our problems was never engineering, but politics. Not necessarily the Washington kind, but the local politics of competing interest groups.

Everyone has wanted to "fix" the coast, but often only if that fix didn't mean impacting their lives. From the shipping industry to sports fishers, if a project to stop land loss was going to hurt their interests, a quick phone to their Congressional members could scuttle the plans.

For 20 years we lost hundreds of square miles of the most valuable coastal estuary in the lower 48, insisting there was some win-win scenario even as scientists told us none existed. There was never any chance we could protect everything or rebuild everywhere, never a project that could turn the clock back without hurting groups that had been making money off the "new" degraded estuary.

But neither our politicians nor the people who elected them had the courage to admit the truth, much less make the calls. The CPRA has finally achieved that with the 2012 Master Plan.

Most of the $50 billion goes to getting the Mississippi River back into the wetlands and rebuilding marshes, which has always been the only way we could fashion a future here. The projects chosen south of New Orleans put 50 percent of the river's flow into the starving deltas so critical to fish, wildlife and flood protection. Only $12.7 billion goes to levees statewide.

The agency said its decisions were made using a planning tool based on two uncompromising drivers: Flood protection and land-building.

That's how it decided on using six large Mississippi River sediment diversions as the primary tools for rebuilding wetlands south of New Orleans. Its computer modeling showed the other feasible options -- slurry pipelines, more but smaller sediment diversions and freshwater diversions -- could not build as much land. All of the diversion are planned for "pulsing," orchestrating their use to certain river levels.

The decisions were made considering the impact the different projects would have on the habitat's "ecological services" -- what it was producing, especially in terms of fisheries. That process showed fewer large diversions had about the same impacts as the other choices, so they were selected because they built more land.

The process was open to the public, and remains so. Anyone who wants to understand how choices were made, the criteria used and the reasoning offered when subjective decisions were required, can find them in the indexes to the plan.

That planning tool was also used in deciding where to site projects, and what to let go.

For example, there is nothing planned for trying to save the great Bird's Foot delta south of Venice, a landscape battered by the oil industry, shipping and subsidence -- but still an ecological treasure, and critically important to migratory birds.

That decision was a dagger to my heart; the delta is one of my favorite places on the planet. But it makes sense.

"The Bird's Foot is subsiding at the rate of 2 meters per century, so there was no return on your investment there -- even if it could be done," said David Muth, Louisiana director of the National Wildlife Federation's Louisiana Coastal Campaign. "And the concept is to replace that habitat further up the stem of the river with the sediment diversions in the plan.

"Using their planning tool, (CPRA) made the choice to get the biggest bang for their bucks."

I couldn't argue with that logic.

The planners make a point to explain they could do much, much more with a larger budget.

Under current forecasts of subsidence and sea-level rise because of global warming, the $50 billion could build 859 square miles in 50 years. But with $100 billion, the plan could expand and build between 900 and 1,400 square miles in 50 years.

It's important to draw that distinction because the state and nation need to know this plan isn't the best we can do, just what we hope to get done with a limited budget.

In fact, this document makes many statements and points which have seldom been heard from a Louisiana agency when it comes to environmental issues. Everyone should read it. It's cause for hope.

Which brings us to that second word: Courage.

All this hope will vanish in a hurry if the rest of us don't show the courage to resist the politics that have scuttled previous attempts at hard plans.

The CPRA doesn't have the authority to put this plan into action. That lies with the Legislature and governor. In the week since the plan was released there's already been push back from interest groups who could be damaged. I'm not saying the plan is perfect, or expecting it to race through untouched. Maybe the plan can be tweaked to lessen impacts, but the politicians need support to resist ignoring science.

It's up to the coast's largest interest group to give them courage to do that. I'm talking about the millions of us who don't take paychecks from the coast but need that ecosystem just to live here.

The first reading of grass-roots support and opposition will come when the public hearings get under way. The first is scheduled Monday at the University of New Orleans's Lindy Boggs Conference Center Auditorium. The public can tour master plan exhibits starting at 1 p.m., while the hearing and comment period runs 5:30-7 p.m.

It's important for all voices to be heard -- but then for the Legislature to allow the tough decisions to be made so work can begin. Delay really isn't an option any longer. Hurricane Katrina proved that.

The 2012 Master Plan finally gives us hope, if we have the courage to run with it.