‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds | New Orleans

TThe process of relocating people from New Orleans must begin immediately as New Orleans reaches a “point of no return” where it will be surrounded by oceans within decades due to the climate crisis, according to a new study.

Continued sea level rise and extreme erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will engulf the New Orleans area within a few generations; the new paper predicts that the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.”

Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, including rising sea levels caused by global warming, increased hurricanes and hurricanes that are a feature of the climate crisis. depression A coastline carved out by the oil and gas industry.

South Louisiana faces a 10- to 7-foot sea level rise and the loss of three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands, according to the study, which compared today’s rising global temperatures to a similar period of temperatures that caused sea level rise 125,000 years ago; this would cause the coastline to “migrate inland as much as 100 km (62 mi)”, thus stranding New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

This scenario makes the region “the world’s most physically vulnerable coastal region” and requires urgent action to prepare a smooth transition for people far from New Orleans, the researchers note. population Relocation of approximately 360,000 people to safer locations.

Louisiana has already experienced population loss The paper warns that this trend will accelerate erratically in recent years if no action is taken to confront the dangers facing its largest city and surrounding communities.

“While climate mitigation remains the first step to preventing the worst outcomes, coastal Louisiana has clearly passed the point of no return,” the perspective paper added. It was published inside Nature Sustainability magazine. A perspectives article is a scientific paper that provides evaluation rather than new data.

After the disastrous Hurricane Katrina in 2005, billions of dollars were spent to reinforce New Orleans with a vast network of levees, floodgates and pumps. But increasing threats to the city mean levees that already require heavy-handed measures. upgrades The new paper warns that remaining adequate may not save the city in the long term.

“From a paleoclimate perspective, New Orleans is gone; the question is how long it will last,” said Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation expert at Tulane University and one of five co-authors of the paper.

“It’s not clear how long it will take, but it will probably take decades rather than centuries. Even if you stop climate change today, New Orleans’ days are still numbered. You can’t keep an island afloat that’s going to be surrounded by open sea and is below sea level. There’s no money to do that.”

City, state and federal leaders must begin working to provide coordinated support for people moving away from the New Orleans area, starting with the most vulnerable communities. Plaquemines parish Keenan said there are people living outside the levee system.

“New Orleans is in a terminal situation, and we need to be clear to the patient that this is terminal,” he said. “There is an opportunity for palliative care, we can transform people and the economy. We can get ahead of this.”

But he added: “No politician wants to be the first to make this fatal diagnosis. They will talk about it behind closed doors, but never in public.”

New Orleans faces obvious challenges; Located in a bowl-shaped basin below sea level, the city currently places 99% of its population at risk of severe flooding; This is the worst flood hazard of any city in the United States. A separate study was published last week.

“Even compared to all other U.S. cities, New Orleans really stands out, and that’s concerning,” said Wanyun Shao, a geographer at the University of Alabama and co-author of the study.

“There’s no specific timeline for how long New Orleans has left, but we know it’s in big trouble. They’re facing one of the highest sea level rises in the world, and I don’t know how long human effort can fight that tide. It’s like a ticking time bomb.”

Shao said he agreed that people should relocate. “I know this is a politically and emotionally charged issue, there are people who have a deep attachment to New Orleans,” he said. “But a controlled withdrawal, no matter how tempting, is the ultimate solution at some point.”

The huge pressure on this southern cultural hotspot is the rapid retreat of surrounding lands. Louisiana since the 1930s lost 2,000 square miles of land, equivalent to the size of Delaware, will undergo coastal erosion, and another 3,000 square miles will be lost in the next 50 years. Land loss is so rapid that an area the size of a football field is disappearing every 100 minutes.

To counter this, Louisiana has settled on a new plan over the past decade that avoids building more flood defenses and instead tries to take advantage of the Mississippi River’s natural ability to rebuild land. Levees and other infrastructure have so far straitjacketed the naturally meandering Mississippi, pushing the sediment it carries directly into the Gulf of Mexico rather than replenishing coastal wetlands.

Supposed Middle Barataria Sediment Diversion The project, which broke ground in 2023, will help restore a more natural flow in the Mississippi Delta, allowing sediment to accumulate in coastal areas where it was lost. The project estimates that more than 20 square miles of new land will be created over the next 50 years under the plan.

But Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, scrapped The project claimed last year that its $3 billion cost was too high and threatened the state’s fishing industry. “This level of spending is unsustainable,” Landry said at the time, adding that the project endangered the livelihoods of “the people who have sustained our state for generations.”

Proponents of the project, which was funded through BP’s settlement over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, said the decision was disastrous for the state, pointing out that fishing communities would still have to move because of worsening erosion.

Garret Graves is a former Republican member of Congress who once led the state’s coastal restoration agency. in question Landry was guilty of a “foolish decision” that “will result in one of the biggest setbacks for the protection of our coasts and communities in decades.”

The loss of the sediment diversion plan “effectively means giving up large portions of the Louisiana coast, including the New Orleans area,” according to the new research paper.

Meanwhile, a legislative proposal that would force oil and gas companies to pay for damage to Louisiana’s coastline is also in doubt. This month, the U.S. supreme court allowed the fossil fuel industry to appeal federally to a state jury verdict that Chevron pay $740 million to repair damage to wetlands by dredging canals, drilling wells and discharging wastewater.

“The combination of these decisions leads to a scenario where the state stops trying to build land,” Keenan said. “This just speeds up the timeline. They may be buying time, but that option is currently closed, which means the New Orleans levees are certain to fail over and over again. The floodwater will have nowhere else to go.”

Although the United States has never before moved a major city wholesale, many communities have moved for economic reasons in the past, and some have moved for economic reasons now. climate crisis, more. In Louisiana, the government could begin planning and building appropriate infrastructure in safer areas on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, the large estuary north of New Orleans, Keenan said.

“This could be an opportunity for New Orleans to move people further north, invest in long-term infrastructure and make it sustainable,” Keenan said.

“This exodus has already begun, so if nothing is done, people will flow out over time and it will create an uncoordinated mess. The market will talk about people not being able to get insurance. Louisiana needs to stop the bleeding and acknowledge that this is happening. But there are no plans right now.”

Timothy Dixon, an expert on coastal environments at the University of South Florida who was not involved in the new paper, said the study “does a good job” highlighting the challenge Louisiana faces with land collapsing along with rising sea levels.

“New Orleans isn’t going to disappear in 10 years or something like that, but policymakers really should have considered a relocation plan a century ago,” Dixon said. his own research suggests A measured retreat from the Louisiana coast.

“Governments may not have the ability to order people to leave, but people will be willing to move voluntarily, and we’re already seeing that. I’m not optimistic that our political system can handle this sort of thing, it will require leadership and unpopular decisions. Also, many people don’t want to move. They love where they were born.”

Landry’s office was contacted for comment but did not hear back.