Louisiana's Vanishing Coast

"...like disintegrating lace..."

That's how the authors of the NOLA series on Louisiana's vanishing coast describe what's left of the land and marsh that make up our southern parishes.

I've been searching for reliable sources to read so I can learn more about this subject and this NOLA series, partnered with the New York Times, is my starting point. In a series of articles the authors introduce us to various communities and people in south Louisiana who are watching not only their land but also their homes and their culture and way of life disappear.

It's heartbreaking and from this early stage of my reading it doesn't appear there are any clear answers.  It doesn't appear that any amount of money thrown at this problem will be able to solve it.

The series of articles point fingers at a number of culprits: rising sea levels due to climate change, a series of destructive storms, oil companies who built and widened canals but never repaired them when they left, the construction of levees to control the Mississippi, and even plagues of insects and rodents who destroy vegetation.

This article about the community of Jean Lafitte, located just south of New Orleans, chronicles the efforts of the mayor, Timmy Kerner, who has adopted the strategy of improving his community to the point that it would be more economically feasible to save it from erosion than to let it go:

His strategy was to secure so much public investment for Jean Lafitte that it would eventually become too valuable to abandon. In a decade, he had built a 1,300-seat auditorium, a library, a wetlands museum, a civic center and a baseball park. Jean Lafitte did not have a stoplight, but it had a senior center, a medical clinic, an art gallery, a boxing club, a nature trail and a visitor center where animatronic puppets acted out the story of its privateer namesake.  

Some of the facilities had been used sparingly, and many at the grand opening questioned whether the seafood pavilion would be much different. To the mayor that was largely beside the point. What mattered was that the structure existed, that its poured concrete and steel beams made Lafitte that much more permanent. "Do we lose that investment, or do we protect it?" Kerner asked...

The authors, Kevin Sack and John Schwartz, point out that a fourth of our wetlands are already gone and in fifty years 2,000 square miles could also go.  In human terms:

The Gulf Restoration Network, a nonprofit conservation group, calculates that there are 358,000 people and 116,000 houses in Louisiana census tracts that would be swamped in the surge of a catastrophic hurricane by 2062. The Geological Survey predicts that in 200 years the state's wetlands could be gone altogether.

As Sack and Schwartz report it, the community of Jean Lafitte and everything else south of that New Orleans levee has basically been abandoned to the elements with the Corps of Engineers advocating relocation of the people.  But that's not to say that nobody is trying to solve the problem. There are lots of committees, levee boards, ecologists, politicians, environmentalists, and other experts working to find and agree on solutions.  And then there is the ever present problem of funding.

There are so many factors at play in this issue. This NOLA series is a great place to start learning about it, which is what I'm trying to do.

After you read about the community of Jean Lafitte, be sure you read this article about the Leeville community on Bayou Lafourche and the cemeteries that are washing out to sea.  It's heartbreaking.

While there are plenty of problems in Louisiana and we've long been known for our  notorious politicians and various aspects of corruption, (and tell me where, please, will you NOT find that?) this is one issue on which we should all be united.  Whether you believe in global warming or climate change or not, whether you believe this land loss is due to greedy oil companies and their negligence, or whether you believe it's just a natural course of events, what we all need to remember is that this is our state: our culture, our way of life.

There are few places more beautiful in my mind than south Louisiana. The swamps, the bayous, the people and their way of life, is unlike anywhere else.  How can we let this go?

There has got to be a way to restore and preserve our coastline and our state.

If you have a good source or recommendation for further reading on this, please share with me in the comments!

Further Reading:
Insects Feast on Louisiana's Coast (NOLA: Feb. 2018)
Buried at Sea: As cemeteries on Louisiana coast wash away, so does history (NOLA: March 2018)
Our Drowning Coast (NOLA: Feb. 2018)
Why the Master Plan will not Protect Louisiana (LSU Law Center: Feb. 2017)

Frivolous Lawsuit of the Day

This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've read all day (but it's early yet...) :

Victims of Hurricane Katrina are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed. The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.

"The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents seen by AFP. The increase in global surface air and water temperatures "in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them."

Shame on the lawyer that takes on this frivolous suit. Initially the district court rejected the case but an appeals court decided that the case could be heard.

No wonder the courts are clogged.

(H/T: The Dead Pelican)

Cap 'n Tax and Mary Katherine Ham

The much debated Cap 'n Trade (aka Cap and Tax) legislation is up for vote tomorrow. The tension is palpable and the vote is critical. Do the Dems have the votes, or not?

It's been said that this vote will have serious ramifications in 2010. All participants are nervous and there are numerous polls and opinions out there. One such survey was conducted by The National Center for Public Policy Research of African Americans. They found the following:

* 76% of African-Americans want Congress to make economic recovery its top priority, even if it delays action on climate change;

* 38% believe job losses resulting from climate change legislation would fall heaviest on the African-American community. Only 7% believe job losses would fall heaviest on Hispanics and only 2% believe they would fall heaviest on whites;

* 56% believe Washington policymakers have failed to adequately take into account the economic and quality of life concerns of the African-American community when formulating climate change policy;

* 52% of respondents aren't willing pay anything more for either gasoline or electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 73% are unwilling to pay more than 50 cents more for a gallon of gas and 76% are unwilling to pay more than $50 more per year for electricity to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions;

There's more at the link.

The Heritage Foundation has also done a study and comes to the conclusion that the legislation will do little for "global warming" but will absolutely increase taxes: "Though the proposed legislation will have little impact on world temperatures, it is a massive energy tax in disguise that promises job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left-turn towards big government."

With regard to the job loss issue, just refer back to Lion Oil who promised to shutter their refinery in El Dorado should this thing pass. They wouldn't be able to survive. They would lay off 1,200 employees. There are others. Obama touts this bill as one that would GROW jobs. Not so.

The Heritage study also points out that energy costs will skyrocket: "President Barack Obama described the plan best when he said “[u]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” And skyrocket they will. In total, a typical family of four will see its energy costs rise by over $22,800 from 2012-2035." I don't know about you, but my energy costs are already incredible. And we all know what happens when energy costs rise. Everything else does, too.

Last summer when gas prices were $5.00, the cost of everything else in the grocery store went up. Not just a few cents, either. Milk jumped from $2 to $4 a gallon, a pound of cheese jumped from $1.50 to $4.50...

The Wall Street Journal exposes a counter argument that Dems are using when they say that the CBO says this bill will only cost families $175 per year. This is deceptive. According to the WSJ, the CBO report only looks at the first year. "To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers."

In addition, the CBO report ignores the potential decrease in the GDP because of the cap.

The CBO report also ignores the fact that some regions will be hit harder than others: "Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn't take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others -- manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families."

Some in the Midwest are especially anxious about the bill; from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Midwestern Republicans are calling the measure "an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals in Washington, D.C. 'This is a job killer, particularly for the upper Midwest,' said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican who is one of the leading voices against a climate change bill."

This is another case of Congress pushing through legislation so fast that nobody has read the bill. Mary Katherine Ham has made it her quest to read the whole thing - you can follow her findings here and here. She'll definitely be ahead of Congress. Here is her quest:



Ugh! Contact your legislators, people!

Flash! Gas Prices Too Low!!!

From an editorial in today's New York Times which is advocating a gasoline tax for the purpose of raising gasoline prices:

"A bitter recession is not the most opportune time to ratchet up the price of energy. But if the Obama administration is to meet its twin objectives of reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and cutting its emissions of greenhouse gases, it needs to start thinking now about mechanisms to curb the nation’s demand for energy when the economy emerges from recession in the future."

I'm no economist by any means - I can barely balance my checkbook, but this is such an asinine position to me. We're in extremely volatile economic times right now, and the New York Times is advocating a gas tax to keep gas prices higher.

Americans love their cars; we love the 1964 Mustang and we love big luxurious Cadillacs and we love our SUVs. We love our big 8-cylinder engines! We even love to buy American (usually). Does anybody seriously think that a freaking Prius LOOKS good? Could you imagine Tony Soprano in a Prius?? Try packing the family of four into a Prius and driving to grandma's house fourteen hours away. It's not going to happen.

The problem with the American auto industry, as most real people know, is the unions. The union costs force auto costs up higher than they should be; it's perfectly possible to get a well made, good car without the exorbinate costs. As an example, Steve bought a Hyundai SUV last year and it's a great car! It's solid and better made than some of the American counterparts we looked at and test drove.

The position of the Obama team has been that we need to lower our dependence on foreign oil. That's all well and good - let's drill in ANWAR then. Let's produce our own oil. Build refineries.

I may be over thinking this, but it seems that the additional objective here, of lowering greenhouse emissions, is the real focus of the New York Times editorial. Tax gasoline to make the price higher so people who don't want to pay $4 a gallon will go buy an ugly Prius (or some other toy-car) which will supposedly lower greenhouse gas emissions and solve global warming (which many scientists don't believe exists.)

It is a proven fact that lowering taxes in a recession is the right course of action. The Obama team needs to look at lowering corporate taxes rather than raising gasoline taxes. With the New York Times own dismal financial position right now, they are in no real position to be giving economic advice to the incoming administration.

Holy Cow!

I am a carnivore; I love a good, rare steak. And I don't care WHAT the global warming fanatics at the U.N. think, I'm going to continue to eat my steaks, cheeseburgers, and rare, rump roasts.

According to statistics from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, I, as an average person in the industrialized world, eat 176 pounds of meat annually. But according to the FAO, I am killing the planet because cows pass methane gas. And because ranchers have to kill trees to make pastures for cows. Who pass methane gas.

It seems to me if all those cows are killing the planet, then I should eat them. Bad cows.

(Photo credit: Robert Nicklesberg/Getty)