Lost Lands Tours | An environmentally responsible swamp tour in Louisiana – Gov. Jeff Landry drills deep into climate denial

Gov. Jeff Landry drills deep into climate denial

I once thought our oil-loving Gov. Jeff Landry might want to replace the pelican on our state flag with a drilling rig. But nine months into his administration, a more accurate image is emerging.

His flag should feature a pelican with its head stuck in a hole in the ground. A drilling hole.

That’s because Landry continues to insist the best future for Louisiana and the nation is more oil production, despite the environmental and economic changes sweeping the world in response to climate change caused by the emissions from those products — changes that pose undeniable threats to Louisiana’s coast.

This is some of the news Landry seems to have missed from his blinkered world down that hole.

Studies by the insurance industry show losses from climate weather disasters in the United States have gone from $4 billion annually in 2000 to $100 billion now. Those losses have led major companies to leave states such as Louisiana which are now suffering extreme losses almost annually.

The insurance and banking industries warn that the growing risks from climate impacts are not just a threat to individual homeowners, but pose a financial crisis for the nation.

In congressional testimony, leaders in the reinsurance industry — which provides insurance companies funding to cover extreme events like hurricanes — warned that those impacts could cause the whole property insurance model to crash, setting the U.S. up for a major economic crisis. They worry that the possibility of soaring insurance rates and the unavailability of insurance could cause real estate prices to tank, leaving mortgage and investment firms facing ruin due to unpaid loans.

As one expert said, “[just] as the U.S. economy was overexposed to mortgage risk in 2008, the economy today is overexposed to climate risk.”

The scope of the economic impacts already being felt due to climate change has prompted Wall Street firms to use climate risk models before backing investments with clients’ money.

Bond rating giant Moody’s put it simply: “Climate risk is a business risk.”

But Landry, isolated in his drilling hole, doesn’t talk about those facts. He doesn’t acknowledge evidence that emissions are causing the planet to repeatedly break heat records and forcing the seas to rise at record rates.

He won’t admit climate change is the reason that at least 20 insurance companies have already fled the state and that those remaining are charging mortgage-busting premiums and/or getting taxpayer subsidies to stay. He won’t accept it’s the reason why our state now has the second highest home insurance premiums behind only Florida (another state being battered by climate change) and why Louisiana home mortgage holders now pay about 30% of their income on insurance and utilities.

Down in that hole, Landry doesn’t have to face the news that hurricanes are getting larger faster, pushing record storm surges, eating up what’s left of Louisiana’s battered, sinking coastal zone and forcing a recalculation of what the state’s $50 billion plan for coastal protection and restoration can achieve.

All this would be bad enough if Landry stopped ignoring those truths. But he is now actively trying to keep the nation from addressing this disaster train as a leader in an effort with other GOP governors to roll back clean air programs by the Biden-Harris administration.

None of this is to say Louisiana — or the world — should or even could suddenly stop producing and using fossil fuels. But climatologists agree that the world must be on the road to gradual transition away from those products to have any chance at slowing climate change and saving even some of Louisiana’s coastal communities and industries.

Landry’s insistence that oil production is the future for the state and nation is as risky as claims that the Titanic was unsinkable.

If he won’t accept climate reality, that new flag will show a dead pelican next to the drilling hole.

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