Mar
21
2022
Last month New Orleans crossed a historic benchmark. The Big Easy was given a new, more accurate nickname.
Welcome to life in “The Big Risky.”
That’s the verdict from the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the collection...
Mar
07
2022
When you’ve developed a potentially fatal dependency, should you take steps that deepen it, or work to kick the habit?
For at least a decade Earth has been sending climate signals, such as rapidly rising seas, larger hurricanes and record...
Feb
21
2022
Recent headlines had me thinking about a question I posed five years ago to a coastal legislator. He opposed regulations on fossil fuel emissions, fearing they would hurt the oil businesses that employed his voters.
“Don’t you think you have...
Feb
07
2022
If your neighbor started a backyard business that was producing fumes known to pose fatal health effects for your family, which of these proposals would you support:
A) Make him stop and find a job that doesn’t threaten your future.
B)...
Jan
23
2022
Two events have always stood as positive game-changers in the history of Louisiana’s struggle to save some of its sinking, eroding and drowning coastal zone.
The first was Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s success convincing the state’s business community that...
Jan
10
2022
As 2021 came to a close, Louisiana got very important information from a key location in its fight for coastal survival, information local news outlets paid scant attention to.
No, it didn’t come from Baton Rouge or Washington, D.C.
It came...
Dec
28
2021
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...
Dec
14
2021
A frustrated employee of the Environmental Protection Agency once asked me this question:
If permits for the legal pollution of cancer-causing agents into the air were granted by a public vote rather than politicians—some of whom work at or even...
Nov
29
2021
The most persistent argument against ending reliance on the fossil fuels producing emissions driving the climate change flooding our coasts has been the fear of losing jobs. In an oil and gas producing state like Louisiana, that fear is...
Nov
15
2021
After the U.S. House followed the Senate recently and passed the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill with 14 votes from its 213 GOP members, but none from Louisiana, there were revealing comments from the two most powerful members of Louisiana’s...
