The Key to Fighting Coastal Land Loss Is in Antarctica. And the Voting Booth.
Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
The future of Louisiana’s fight for coastal life depends on three sources: the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, the policies coming from Washington D.C. — and the person you see in a mirror.
Given those markers, I sought an update on that news from experts in those fields, including Virginia Burkett, chief scientist for Climate and Land Use Change at the U.S. Geological Survey; Torbjorn Tornqvist, Tulane professor and climate researcher; and Donald Boesch, former head of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and a longtime contributor to Louisiana’s coastal planning and research.
And this year, like the previous 10, the news was mostly bad.
The best summary from them goes like this: While coastal residents over 40 likely won’t be facing climate Armageddon in their lifetimes, any chance future generations have for living below I-10 will depend on current generations dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next 20 to 30 years.
So we have a window of reasonable opportunity for our children and grandchildren to live sustainability here through the end of this century, but that window is closing fast.
Here’s why.
