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According to the latest warnings from the international climate change agency, Louisiana will become more humid, wetter, and hotter over the coming decades. And the extreme weather will be more than just uncomfortable — it will be deadly, and already is.
The Report, dubbed “a damning indictment of failed climate leadership” by A top United Nations officialThe study, which examined the effects of an increase in global temperature of 1.1 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, on people living in coastal areas, such as Louisiana, found that many are already suffering. The world’s inability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has meant that the world will heat by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050.
“With only 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming so far, we’re already seeing a rapid acceleration of harmful impacts all around the world,” said National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Kathleen Miller, one of the report’s lead authors. “That is ringing the alarm bell.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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Residents of coastal Louisiana are already at the frontlines for more severe hurricanes, rising seas and flood-inducing rainfall showers. Extreme heatwavesAccording to Virginia Burkett (chief scientist for climate change and land use change at the U.S. Geological Survey), climate change is a major cause of climate change. Louisiana could become 12 degrees hotter by the end century, allowing for even more moisture to be retained and worsening storms.
“You couple sea level rise with the increase in storm intensity, and you have basically an existential threat for coastal Louisiana,” said Burkett, who also serves on Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force. “Without adaptation and mitigation, communities and natural systems along the northern Gulf Coast, particularly in coastal Louisiana, will continue to decline.”
There’s still hope, Miller added. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Monday report, drastic cuts in fossil fuel emissions over the next decades would keep global temperature within a range that allows people to adapt to the effects of climate change.
But it won’t be easy. The windows for climate adaptation and mitigation are the same if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change and protect against the warming that’s already locked in.
“What we’re finding is there are things that can be done within limits. If warming gets too far, then we’re going to increasingly run into what we call ‘hard limits,’” Miller said.
These “hard limits” come after warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, resulting in impacts that people can’t adapt to — like having the Gulf of Mexico overcome their community. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that sea levels will rise by as much as 2 feet in Louisiana by 2050 and more than 4 feet in 2100.
Data: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information Louisiana State climate Summary, 2022
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According to the IPCC report, sea level rise could make some coastal areas uninhabitable if we don’t reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2020. If action is taken, the report emphasized the need for “transformational adaptation” through regional collaborations, investment in nature-based solutions over gray infrastructure and encouraging climate-resilient development.
Some of these issues are addressed in Louisiana’s first-ever Climate PlanIt outlines policies that would align state policy with global efforts to achieve net-zero by 2020.
Officials in Louisiana saw Hurricane Katrina as a terrible wake-up call about the need to adapt to the effects of severe storms and extreme land losses along the coast.
Each disaster is worse than the last, making it harder to balance forward-looking mitigation with recovery, stated Camille Manning-Broome (executive director of the Center for Planning Excellence). The nonprofit works in partnership with the state to improve disaster resilience and climate adaptation.
“Because our vulnerabilities in Louisiana make it hard to get ahead of these compounding disasters, we have got to focus on a whole of government approach,” she said.
That means all state agencies need to consider their own role in dealing with the effects of climate change, Manning-Broome said, which is a process that the governor’s office has already begun with the center.
State and local governments will also need to revamp how they think about water management and development, Manning-Broome said, shifting away from Louisiana’s traditional approach of transporting what with ditches and culverts to living with water and constructing more water retention areas and green spaces to deal with increased rainfall.
It also requires all levels tackling larger issues that harm a community’s resiliency, including racial divisions and the state’s high poverty rate that leave residents without the tools to deal with disasters alone.
People are already migrating from high-risk areas within miles of the state’s eroding shoreline, but it isn’t happening equitably due to gaps in federal disaster recovery programs. People without the ability to move are left with no other option than to rebuild after each storm.
“We’re going to need to think creatively about buyouts and human migration and what that looks like,” Manning-Broome said. “Otherwise, people will just slowly get strangled out, and we’ll continue to see outward migration out of Louisiana.”
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