As President Donald Trump’s administration prepares to unravel federal policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, state and local governments are trying increasingly aggressive steps to cope with the consequences of those emissions, Bloomberg reports.
In New Jersey, a state program offers residents in flood zones the pre-Hurricane Sandy value of their homes, turning the land into a buffer against the next storm. In Alaska, entire coastal towns are petitioning the federal government for money to move inland. But nowhere is the rush to adapt to climate change more urgent than in Louisiana.
Levees built in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 reduced inundations but also the deposit of sediment that had offset the gradual sinking of the marshlands—a process that accelerated with the expansion of the area’s oil and gas industry.
Meanwhile, canals built to service the oil and gas wells let salt water penetrate deeper into the marshes, killing vegetation and speeding erosion. Since 1932, the state has lost 1,800 square miles of land, roughly equivalent to 80 Manhattans. On top of all that, the state must contend with sea-level rise.
If it does nothing, Louisiana is expected to lose as much as 4,000 additional square miles of land in the next half-century. Its residents have no choice but to retreat from the coast; the question officials are trying to answer is where that retreat can be postponed and for how long.
So on a recent morning in Baton Rouge, a thousand miles from where Senate Democrats were jousting with Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about whether humans are warming the planet, the future of U.S. climate policy was being crafted in a small room in the east wing of the Louisiana Capitol.
“We’re trying to make the best decisions for the most people,” Bren Haase, chief of planning for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says, adding that Louisiana’s strategy could become a model for other states. “The plan is really a framework to make those tough decisions.”
