Voting for This Congressman is the Same as Voting to Drown.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, the House minority whip, voted against the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. (Photo by Scott Applewhite, The Associated Press)
So as 2021 comes to an end and I look back on 40 years covering Louisiana’s coastal crisis, what do I think our chances are now for winning this existential fight?
I’m cautiously pessimistic.
The pessimism comes from three factors.
The first is the success anti-science politicians had blocking urgently needed regulations to decarbonize our society, the only way to quickly slow the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change.
That ranks No. 1 because the biggest news for the coast in 2021—and perhaps the last 20 years—was the finding that quickly slowing sea level rise is the only way to keep most of what’s below U.S. 90 dry beyond 2050.
That verdict came from the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the agency in charge of the state’s $91 billion coastal master plan. The centerpiece for that effort is using billion-dollar controlled river sediment diversions to rebuild our sinking basins.
But this year, the CPRA’s computers concluded that at current rates, by 2050 sea levels will be rising so fast the Gulf of Mexico will begin drowning wetlands faster than we can replace them.
We know the sea level is rising quickly mainly because fossil fuel emissions over the past 150 years have been warming the oceans. So reducing those emissions is the only sure way to slow that rise—and save some of Louisiana’s lower third.
Yet almost every Republican in Congress not only fights those regulations but rejects or downplays the science behind climate change.
The most egregious example is their recent move to kill President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan, much of which is devoted to decarbonizing our economy. If it fails, climate scientists say, the nation likely will miss a chance to significantly slow sea level rise this century.
And that would mean the Gulf would begin swallowing much of Louisiana below U.S. 90 over the next few decades
The second reason for my pessimism is the disinterest the voting public has shown in this emergency by reelecting the same politicians blocking the road to coastal survival.
A prime example is keeping U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise of Jefferson Parish in Congress.
Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.
