Gov. John Bel Edwards giving an update on Hurricane Sally. (Photo by Bill Feig)

When Gov. John Bel Edwards last month announced his step-by-step plan to put Louisiana on a path to “net zero” global warming emissions by 2050, a lot of hyperbolic boos and cheers followed. Those who make their livings mining and refining emissions-causing oil and gas warned the state’s economy would collapse, while many in the environmental community proclaimed Edwards the savior our state needs.

After four weeks of breathing room, it’s time to fact check those worries and claims.

First, it’s critical for Louisiana to make this effort for very selfish reasons. Most of the economic engines driving this state are located in its southern third, a landscape that could be drowned by the Gulf of Mexico within the next 40 to 50 years due to deltaic subsidence and sea level rise. There’s not much we can do to stop the sinking, but we know accelerating sea levels are a product of global warming caused by those emissions — something we can control.

Yet Louisianians individually are among the largest contributors to this problem on the planet. We rank fifth among states in both total carbon emissions and emissions per-capita in a nation that ranks second in the world in total emissions.

It’s obviously in our self-interest to reduce the fuel driving us toward destruction.

So how does a state get to “net zero?” It uses data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to see what its level of emissions are, and where they come from, then measures what resources it has to take emissions out of the air, such as wetlands, forests and clean power generation through wind, solar and the like. It can then establish policies to reduce output at emission sources and others to increase features that remove emissions to eventually reach “net zero.”

Some emissions reductions can be done simply by government encouraging the public and industries to look for ways to be more fuel efficient, moving state fleets to electric vehicles, and the planting of trees.

But if voluntary compliance for the betterment of society usually worked, there would be no need for speed traps on highways or air pollution monitors.

So we know to reach the level of reduction in the 20 to 30 years we have left to avoid the advent of really terrible climate consequences, we’ll need state and federal policies backed by regulations and enforcement.

Which brings us to the governor’s executive orders.

Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.