Here in New Orleans, we are not climate deniers. For more than 300 years, New Orleans has defended its unique position, most recently with a $15bn storm wall system that kept the city bone-dry during a category five storm.
That is why it was frustrating to read the Guardian’s unquestioning coverage of a recent Nature Sustainability perspectives paper by Torbjörn Törnqvist and colleagues (‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds, 4 May). Rather than science, the study is an ideologically driven policy argument dressed in the guise of geological inevitability.
The paper is rife with flaws. Its central scenario, 3 to 7 metres of sea level rise pushing the shoreline 100 kilometers inland, is extrapolated from conditions 125,000 years ago, and with no future timeline – an indefensible basis for advocating for mass relocation.
Yet the paper is also self-fulfilling. Törnqvist warns against “market-driven disorderly movement of people”, but publicly declares New Orleans “terminal”. When investors, insurers and young families read this, they will act accordingly. The study is now part of the very feedback loop it laments.
Here is the question the study’s authors never answer: why New Orleans? Miami sits on porous limestone that cannot be walled off from rising seas. New York’s financial district faces catastrophic flood exposure. Nobody suggests that these cities should be deserted.
Ultimately, abandonment is simply not realistic. More than 60% of America’s natural gas is exported from southern Louisiana. New Orleans moves more than 90% of America’s grain exports. The Mississippi River is the logistical spine of the United States. On an economic basis alone, New Orleans is essential.
Much better than abandonment is the approach currently under way, including better infrastructure, revised policy (eg insurance), as well as robust empirical research, such as the federal Lower Mississippi River Comprehensive Management Study.
The Delta built land for 7,000 years; restoration is achievable. New Orleans deserves ambition and investment – not an irresponsible academic eulogy.
Michael Hecht
President and CEO, Greater New Orleans, Inc