If we want to prevent another Hurricane Katrina, we need to talk about coastal erosion.
If you’re from Louisiana, you probably know our levee system is killing our state’s ecosystem. If you don’t, here’s a rundown.
Levees prevent the Mississippi River from eroding land from its bank, which means it can’t deposit sediment at the delta near the Gulf of Mexico.
The sediment is supposed to restore the wetlands that the gulf and tropical storms wash away, but the river doesn’t have anything to deposit. Instead, the water washes away more wetlands.
Any Louisianan with a brain agrees our levee system destroys our wetlands, but environmental problems run deeper than our levees.
If Louisiana ever wants to fully recover, we have to be the leading voice in the fight against climate change and the oil industry.
The science is out there, and the brightest scientists in the world have reached a unanimous agreement: Climate change is real, and we’re causing it.
This isn’t a debate. There isn’t controversy. Man-made climate change is as factual as gravity, and if you disagree you’re part of the problem that’s sinking Louisiana.
Climate change is warming our oceans, and because of that, the ice caps at the poles are melting, and causing sea levels to rise.
Those rising sea levels are washing away our wetlands, so now we have nothing to absorb the brunt of hurricanes.
Katrina wouldn’t have been strong enough to flood New Orleans if our wetlands hadn’t been so eroded.
Our warming oceans mean we have the ingredients for stronger hurricanes, and our wetlands can’t survive this because they can’t naturally restore themselves.
Oil companies emit pollution directly related to climate change, and 247wallst.com ranked Louisiana as the tenth most oil-rich state. Much of its oil comes from offshore drilling — the same kind of drilling that caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Our state’s major economic source isn’t only killing our state through air pollution — its pipes and canals are destroying Louisiana.
Oil companies build canals around wetlands as access points for oil and gas wells, and salt water comes through the canals, killing our fragile freshwater wetlands.
Our current system isn’t sustainable. Louisiana could lose an area of land roughly the size of Rhode Island by 2050 if we don’t do something to combat climate change soon.
New Orleans cannot survive another hurricane as powerful as Katrina. If we want to preserve our nation’s most culturally-rich city, we have to stop arguing about settled issues and start coming up with solutions.
I’m not talking about the short-term solution of building higher levees like our U.S. senators want.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., held a field hearing in New Orleans this summer and said we should build higher levees, and our new levee system is “all the safety we need.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy accompanied him, saying he didn’t understand why we needed levees to withstand 500-year floods.
These are the people who are supposed to represent and protect us at the federal level. One wants to only build levees, and the other doesn’t understand why the levees should be as strong as they are.
Neither senator addressed global warming. In fact, both deny humans cause climate change.
Gov. Bobby Jindal also doesn’t believe in climate change. He even told President Obama not to talk about the topic when he visited New Orleans last week. He didn’t listen, #ThanksObama.
Climate change affects Louisiana more than any other state in the nation, so it’s absurd that our leaders and representatives don’t fight against it.
If we don’t want New Orleans, and eventually Baton Rouge, to become the lost city of Atlantis, we need to be on the forefront in environmental issues. We could have avoided the Katrina catastrophe, but years of corporate greed and wearing away our land got the better of us.
Louisiana residents perpetuated Katrina and destroyed New Orleans.
Coastal erosion is a life or death situation in Louisiana, and it’s time we fight back against the oil industries that are killing our beautiful state.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.