Louisiana's Governor Declares State Of Emergency Over Disappearing Coastline (npr.org) 307
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency over the state's rapidly eroding coastline. From a report on NPR: It's an effort to bring nationwide attention to the issue and speed up the federal permitting process for coastal restoration projects. "Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels have made the Louisiana coast the nation's most rapidly deteriorating shoreline," WWNO's Travis Lux tells our Newscast unit. "It loses the equivalent of one football field of land every hour." More than half of the state's population lives on the coast, the declaration states. It adds that the pace of erosion is getting faster: "more than 1,800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone."
Its pretty important... (Score:5, Informative)
Oil from all over the place is processed here.
The people that work these jobs, live on the coast and the sealife that supports these folks and provides a good amount of seafood to the US will disappear if this coastal erosion is allowed to continue.
This isn't just for the people of Louisiana, but for the great resources it provides the rest of the US.
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.
The majority of the folks affected by this live in areas such as Plaquemines, Terrebone, and Lafourche parishes aren't rich by any means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.
The other part of this that's frustrating is that there isn't a simple engineering solution to fix this. The levee system, while keeping urban areas from flooding, prevents sediment build-up that would restore some of the coast line. Even nutria rats are partially responsible for the eroding coast.
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Insightful)
>They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.
The White House no longer recognizes man's effect on climate, which means there's little hope of policy directed at mitigating man's effects on climate - and still probably none even if they acknowledge the climate is changing and are merely ignoring man's role.
Beyond that, the White House already had very little control over other nations that are or likely will significantly affect climate going forward.
So... we're not going to fix the problem any time soon. The ocean doesn't care where you were born, it doesn't decide where its rising levels will flood land.
To suggest people pack up and move isn't insulting, it's unfortunately common sense given the circumstances.
Re: (Score:2)
which means there's little hope of policy directed at mitigating man's effects on climate
Why? So they don't call it man-made climate change and they call it God-made climate change... either way, the water comes up and mitigation has to happen. In places with a lot of infrastructure investment, it can make sense to shore things up. In other places, as you say it makes more sense to relocate. But none of that has anything to do with what causes the climate to change.
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Insightful)
The denial of man's role is part of denying the change at all, because they're happy with the status quo. For some it's economics - they profit under the current system and alterations to reduce or fight the effects of climate change will reduce those profits, for some it's pure denial that the world could ever change.
When the water's up around their ankles, they're scream bloody murder for levees, but that's about it. If it's somebody else up to their ankles they'll come up with some way to rationalize how it was always a risk and the climate hasn't actually changed, and how it's the fault of those who chose to live there.
Re: (Score:2)
When the water's up around their ankles, they're scream bloody murder for levees, but that's about it. If it's somebody else up to their ankles they'll come up with some way to rationalize how it was always a risk and the climate hasn't actually changed, and how it's the fault of those who chose to live there.
OK, but how does that have anything to do with what is causing the climate change? As you say, no one can deny that things have changed once there are people standing around ankle deep in water. At that point they can choose to help those people or not, but this has nothing to do with their feelings on anthropomorphic climate change. A libertarian or small-government conservative who believes in climate science is still going to advocate for no assistance while a liberal or social conservative who denies cl
Re: (Score:2)
That's simply not true. People built dikes and levees all throughout history. It's only in the last 20 years that we've had credible climate science. What makes you think that people will suddenly become fundamentally different?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
As I understand it, the biggest problem is NOT climate change or any other such disaster; the problem is human interference. They have channeled and canalled and levee'd and dredged the Mississippi output. The water -full of silt - that used to wash over the delta and deposit replacement dirt on the marshes and islands during heavy flow days (?) now is channeled along the river between high banks and well out to sea. The current delta is disappearing, but a few hundred years from now there might be a huge n
Re: (Score:3)
As I understand it, the biggest problem is NOT climate change or any other such disaster; the problem is human interference. They have channeled and canalled and levee'd and dredged the Mississippi output. The water -full of silt - that used to wash over the delta and deposit replacement dirt on the marshes and islands during heavy flow days (?) now is channeled along the river between high banks and well out to sea.
There are many factors. Sea level rise is one of them. As it is the one that is accelerating [skepticalscience.com], it is likely to play an ever increasing role.
Re: (Score:2)
You should reconsider your interpretation.
I was saying they had little influence before, now they're giving up what little they had.
That is not the same as saying, "We should give up because we can't stop the other guy from doing it anyway".
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with climate. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels". It has everything to do with 150 years of engineering the Mississippi river. That river flows an ungodly amount of water, and that water picks stuff up and drops it off. Every geographical feature in that area was (mostly) the result of a dynamic equilibrium between sediment deposits and erosion. We've changed the river, and now the land is adjusting to a new equilibrium.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you going to blame when we lose Florida [nytimes.com]? Is there a convenient river there to point the finger at? What ungodly amount of river water is flowing through the So [scientificamerican.com]
Re: (Score:3)
According to NOAA (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html), sea level rise at Grand Isle LA averaged slightly over 9 mm/ year since 1947, and 9.65 mm/ year at Eugene Island LA. And 4.71 mm/ year at New Canal LA. (Those are the 3 locations on that graphic.) According to the wikipedia (attributed to an IPCC report), average global sea level rise in the 20th century is in the neighborhood of 1.8 mm/ year. Those are different time frames, but afaik the 20th century rise was more or less linear
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, the White House already had very little control over other nations that are or likely will significantly affect climate going forward.
Well, they could have supported a number of international accords aimed at reducing emissions.
Re: (Score:3)
Why should the rest of the country pay to relocate people who chose to be near the ocean? That isn't a federal issue, that's for the state or local governments to figure out.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess you missed the part of my post where I said that most of these folks were born in that area.
For all those folks in Syria, why should I have to pay for them to relocate? They chose to live there!
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd have a lot more sympathy for people from LA, if their representatives didn't vote against aid for people affected by Hurricaine Sandy. That would be Reps. Steve Scalise, John Flemming and Sen. Bill Cassidy. See: http://www.latimes.com/busines... [latimes.com] for example. And I'd be more sympathetic if Sen. Cassidy wasn't a climate change skeptic. If the oil companies want to buy a themselves a LA senator, they can pay for protecting the state from climate change too.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see why their place of birth matters. I don't live in the same state I was born in, and I didn't need a federal bailout to move. How pathetic are people that the government has to solve all their problems?
As for Syria, we should not be relocating them either. They need to get their government under control.
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the same reason part of the country pays to bring water to cities in a desert, or pays to have people live in Tornado Alley.
I'm fascinated by this notion that some have that societies should be fundamentally sociopathic... unless of course it's your own backyard, and then suddenly no amount of public funds is too much.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, I can get paid to live in Oklahoma?
Do tell me how!!
Re: (Score:3)
Roads are built, right aways and easements are put in place for utilities, police and fire services, and other public services exist.
Re: (Score:2)
If the feds weren't stealing the money out of our paychecks, the states and towns could tax more to pay for the upkeep themselves. The feds use this money to force states to comply with decisions beyond the authority of the federal government. It's corruption, and it should stop.
Re: (Score:3)
I call it stealing because they take it automatically from our checks. You can't protest by refusing to pay because they've already taken it. We don't pay, they take without permission.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for bringing some sanity to this thread. I've followed some of your' comments on here before, and we may have have public disagreements on things, but thanks for keeping things civil.
Re: (Score:2)
So everyone that thinks a lot of what the government does is bad is a sociopath?
I don't want to have to pay to irrigate the desert nor do I want to pay to rescue landowners on the shoreline. I never had the benefit of a shoreline view, therefore why should I be taxed to pay for those that do? If you want to turn all those lands into public beaches, maybe. Why do people living in livable areas of the country need to pay for those geniuses that choose to live in otherwise uninhabitable areas?
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the rest of the country pay to relocate people who chose to be near the ocean? That isn't a federal issue, that's for the state or local governments to figure out.
Maybe because the issue has been caused in no small part by 300-million Americans driving SUVs, trucks, and burning coal. This is where the funds from a carbon tax should go.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.
That's your choice. Why should the rest of society subsidize your poor choices?
They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.
No, to suggest that they just pack up and move is common sense. The U.S. is a mighty big country. Just pick another location, and move. To continue living anywhere that continues to get battered by Mother Nature is just plain ignorant. Just because they think it's "home" is not a valid reason. Just because they were born there is not a valid reason. At some point in your life, you have to take responsibility for your actions. And
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:4, Informative)
So ironically, transporting the oil and gas out of the region is putting oil and gas production in jeopardy.
That would seem to be yet another reason to transition this country away from fossil fuels altogether. That would address both the erosion issue and the fossil fuel dependence at the same time.
As far as seafood goes, there's going to be a coastline somewhere, no matter how far it moves into the current state of Louisiana. The seafood will still come from wherever that is.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.
The majority of the folks affected by this live in areas such as Plaquemines, Terrebone, and Lafourche parishes aren't rich by any means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.
The notion that people must be immune to relocation just because they "were born there" is an insult to human nature. Conditions change, Things go south, .Shit happens. People relocate, never to return. It's what humans do. It's what humans are meant to do.
Re: (Score:2)
This sounds like a terrible ecological disaster, but maybe it's just an opportunity for the people who live on the coast to adapt to the situation. How about building modern FLOATING canneries and docks that can change with the environment. You can try to build a levee to hold back the water, but that will only work for so long.
Re: (Score:3)
The marshes on the coast are where the fish spend the first part of the their lives in relative safety before heading out to more open areas. When the incoming water destroys land it is removing the marshes and they are not being replaced so the sea life will be impacted as the young fish won't have as many protected areas to grow up in.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably much less so than all the oil wells just off the coast.
Re:Its pretty important... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually it will.
The brackish water of the marshes that is eroding...is a major part of the ecosystem of birth and lifecycle on a lot of fish that start there, breed there, but move more into the ocean. Oysters live on that edge between fresh and salt water....if you lose the marshes, you lose that wide area they can proliferate.
There's also the bird population that depends on this area.
So, no, it i
Re: (Score:2)
You do know don't you that land erosion isn't as much of a problem for the seafood as it is for us? I mean, they live in the water.
Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But what they'll tell the voters is that Canada is paying for it.
Canada might actually be helping ... Sea Ice causes the Oceans to fall in level as it melts. Its Landlocked Ice (like Greenland) that causes levels to rise as it melts. Now, I don't know if anyone has done the math, Canada certainly has some of the latter going on as well ... I certainly haven't ... but maybe the melting in the Northwest Passage is giving it the Old College Try at least.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem that the Democratic government of Louisiana made over the last 50 years? That one?
The 58.1% that voted for Trump.
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/louisiana [nytimes.com]
Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem that the Democratic government of Louisiana made over the last 50 years? That one?
What problems would that be? Not throwing out the users of one of America's most active seaports? Not shutting down the petroleum extraction companies? Not forcing people to move elsewhere?
The fact is, not only have Democrats tried to foster coastal restoration for the past 50 years(check out the legislative history), it has been Republicans refusing to fund the efforts and combined it with hand-wringing denials of any problems. This has been a national problem, ever since Reagan and his anti-government agenda took over.
The saddest thing, is if the Russians could be blamed on the problem, it'd have already been solved. He'd have spared no expense on that. Well, ok, he'd probably have messed that up too, such is the way of things.
The greatest irony, of course, is that the partisan shifting has now given Republicans responsibility for the people's anger and rage at the very thing the GOP could have acted to prevent.
Much like they now own the racist bigots who want to secede. It is terribly funny in a way.
Re: (Score:2)
Citation please.
Uh, seriously?
Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm (Score:4, Insightful)
http://northiowatoday.com/2012... [northiowatoday.com]
Tom Vilsack was a Democrat. Still, I recall how many conservative farmers would complain about poor people taking from the government and yet they were first in line when this money was handed out.
Re: (Score:2)
Here you go: http://www.semissourian.com/co... [semissourian.com]
Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
It means we shouldn't be fighting mother nature to keep the city going.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
nonsense.
this situation with La. coastline has zero to do with climate change, even the "rising sea level" cited as reason is not valid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
yes after giving the prime causes, even that article mentions that *lately* climate change is also given as reason....without citation of course. because it isn't relevant at all next to the primary factors
Re: (Score:2)
At least it's still better than the fake reporting ProPublica regularly cons NPR into.
Re: (Score:2)
"Tax cuts reduce the temperature of the atmosphere!"
Eventually. Any perturbation should eventually become an oscillation. And increasing the temperature of one part of the atmosphere will likely cool another part by a much smaller amount, so there is almost certainly some local cooling at some altitude caused by local resource mismanagement that results from tax cuts.
Doesn't really help from a "negative affects on humans" perspective, though.
"one football field of land every hour" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
But how many libraries of congress of land every hour is that?
I never realised that they played that much football in Louisiana.
Reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels
No, that's not why the delta's disappearing. Here are the reasons why [pri.org]:
1) Levees and flood protections prevent silt from the Mississippi from depositing into the delta to maintain it, and
2) Oil drilling required dredging up the delta to permit pipelines and shipping lanes, destroying wetlands that help capture and build-up the silt.
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Informative)
The delta used to shift and move the river bed quite often. With the canals and leeves in place the natural tendency of the river to move is being fought against. It is the reason why the river breaks out at odd places just up stream or downstream of existing leeves. Part of this is a result of the silt deposits that used to be carried downstream by the Mississippi.
With the wetlands being destroyed the ocean barrier that helped protect against storms is being destroyed. Which exposed larger areas of the coast line to damage.
The problem with your explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your explanation is that it's fact-based, and stands on good science. This is the post-truth era. Thus, the counter to your argument will be:
Re:The problem with your explanation (Score:5, Interesting)
Query: Why would those arguments even exist, considering that the vast majority of the levees, dams, and canals we have today were built during the Great Depression as jobs programs, viz the WPA. Last I checked, these programs was spawned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and LA's governor at the time (who happily agreed) was the infamous Huey Long... neither of whom were members of the party you seek to demonize.
Maybe it would benefit you to realize that the problems in TFA were caused by misguided engineering efforts held throughout the first half of the 20th century?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, of course they were caused by misguided engineering efforts. Everything from the Army Corps of Engineers to Smoky Bear goes under that heading. The most basic problem is the fact that we locate cities next to resources and transportation, which means water, without realizing where the 400-year flood plane is. Etc. We have learned something since then.
Our problem, today, is fixing these things. Which is blocked by folks who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, or even cause and effect at all. T
Re: (Score:3)
We have learned something since then.
I'd love to think you're right, but I just can't.
We see it over and over again, in many places the oldest parts of the city is fine but the newer parts are the problem, 150+ years ago the people settling areas often looked at the terrain before building and built on hills, but since then we gave up and decided that riverfront was a selling feature instead of a hazard.
A few years ago we had major flooding here, the original historic properties (first houses in a city founded at the junction of 2 rivers) were
Re: (Score:2)
What you are observing is economics. As a city or town population grows, the best land becomes unavailable and those who arrive later or have less funds available must settle for less desirable land. Thus many cities have been extended using landfill which liquifies as the San Francisco Marina District did in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, or floods. Risks may not be disclosed by developers, or may be discounted by authorities as the risks of global warming are today.
Efforts to protect people who might
Re: (Score:2)
But again, the most expensive land is what you just called "less desirable". It seems in fact that the floodplain land in most cities is the most expensive, not the least. People WANT to live beside the water, even though it's a horrible idea. The most expensive properties in my city tend to have a river running through their backyard, they're also the first to flood. So every time they flood, the government pays out millions of dollars in disaster relief to the richest people in town.
You can hardly say tha
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe the problem started back then but as time has progressed the problem has gotten worse as the protection provided by thousands of years of silt has been washed away and climate change has raised sea levels? There used to be sand bars protecting the coastline so not as much would have been taken away but without the silt from the river over these past 80 years the sandbars have gone. If the engineering efforts of the past decade or so were to blame there would be still more protection and the loss o
Re: (Score:3)
Articles:
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz... [newyorker.com]
https://placesjournal.org/arti... [placesjournal.org]
good quotes:
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Informative)
"So we're fighting this massive loss of surface land [and] we're also subsiding because we're not replenishing these wetlands," Marshall says. "On top of that, here comes global warming and sea level rise." According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, southern Louisiana has "the highest rate of relative sea level rise of any place in the country, and one of the highest rates anywhere on the planet."
Wrong (Score:3)
"All of this results from three processes that reinforce and amplify each other’s effects: levee construction, oil and gas exploration and sea level rise."
Re: (Score:2)
because the amount of sea level rise to date is minuscule by comparison to those other reasons and can't be taken seriously as a cause of this issue.
Re: (Score:2)
So the maths (Score:2, Insightful)
seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.
Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.
This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.
Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"more than 1,800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone."
In the first case that's 1800 sq miles over 78 years or 23 sq miles per year.
In the second case that's 300 sq miles over 4 years or 75 sq miles per year.
Whichever number you use (and if you include the year in the range, so the numbers may be +/- 1 year) it's still greater than 5 sq miles per year.
By 2040 4/5th of Lousiana will be under water (Score:2)
At the current rate of carbon emissions pumping energy into storms and glacial melt in Greenland, along with sad attempts to stop flood plains from renewing decaying soil mass by siltration deposit of alluvial soils, four fifths of Lousiana will be under water for part of the year.
Look, flood plains are supposed to flood. Stopping the river deposits is why it's getting worse. Destroying the biomass buildup from salt infiltration from Gulf storms.
Florida is way worse off, quite frankly. And it's all the faul
Re: (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
I will have ocean front property in North Louisiana! If you buy that I will throw the Golden Gate in free!
Meh. What is science but a guess (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind you, Louisiana is the top most uneducated state in the nation and this particular area of Louisiana, Cameron county, has the highest percentage of people who do not believe climate change has an effect on plants or animals. Not man-made climate change, but any climate change.
Another person in the article says he likes his AC and gas at reasonable prices so therefore, why, based on a prediction alone, should humans try to limit CO2 production?
Re: (Score:3)
The fact is that many people have dearly held religious beliefs. These beliefs are held with a bond that is far more than any combination of logic or emotion; such conviction in any human is not to be trifled with.
You can't attack people on such a personal, intimate, foundational level and expect people to follow you, or your ideas.
Unfortunately, for decades, many claiming to represent science have been loudly proclaiming (without evidence, as it's unprovable either way) that "science" says that religion, a
Old news: New Orleans is artificial and a mistake (Score:5, Informative)
From a 2005 post https://pesn.com/archive/2005/... [pesn.com]
Summary... the City of New Orleans is sinking, and sliding off the continental shelf. It's doomed even if sea levels did *NOT* rise.
> The river is moving away from the city. The city is sinking because of its
> weight, because no upbuilding by new muck for many decades, because of
> being cut off from the fresh water, because it is sliding off a cliff (the Continental Shelf),
> and because the Oil and Gas Industry is extracting oil out from under it.
> It is a city that for all intents and purposes is now Sea domain.
And, oh yeah, the very fact that ships can navigate from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River is an anthropogenic artifact.
> To understand the City of New Orleans one must first understand the
> massive Mississippi River delta. New Orleans was built at the site of the old
> "French Quarter" on the high ground adjacent to the Mississippi river.
> This location was picked because the Mississippi River didn't have a mouth
> into the ocean. The river simply went into the "Black Swamp" and disappeared.
> This was where ships headed down river had to stop and unload their
> goods to be transshipped across Lake Pontchartrain to the sea. This was
> done by unloading the goods at the docks and then hauling them to the
> lake where shallow draft boats would take the goods to the seagoing ships.
>
> By using some ingenious methods, Henry Shreve -- after whom
> Shreveport, La., is named -- forced the river to dig its own channel out to
> the sea where it now goes. This allowed the ocean-going boats access to
> the enormous Mississippi river. This, together with the work of the US Army
> Corps of Engineers, produced what is functionally the largest ocean port on earth.
Pumping from underground lowers the ground (Score:2)
They Made This Mess (Score:3)
Louisiana consistently elects small-government, anti-EPA, anti-climate Representatives and Senators. Now they want an environmental conservation bailout? They decry federal handouts, and then they turn around begging for help. How about "No".
They cite:
"Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels"
Yet, they ousted their only politician who even pretended to care about the environment and replaced her with Cassidy, whose policies will only hasten that outcome [senate.gov].
New Orleans couldn't be arsed to maintain their levees, then Hurricane Katrina happened. Now this. Louisiana should change their motto to "The No Foresight State".
The end for the southern coastal towns (Score:3)
However, if you're from some town nobody's ever heard of that's on the coast, you're pretty much fucked. If we believe the models and so far they've been spot on, every year some percentage of these towns are going to get flooded and/or walloped by hurricanes.
Each year the federal government and insurance agencies swoop in (for some value of swooping) and rebuild these towns. At some point insurance companies are going to cry uncle. They'll boost rates so high that literally nobody will be able to afford to rebuild. I could even see a situation where after a federal government has to step in and say "We're moving your entire community 50 miles in land and combining it with this other community" Why? Money and resources. At some point as wasteful as the government is, they're going to see the folly of rebuilding a town over and over and as the tide rises it's going to become less and less financially tenantable and take more and more resources.
It's not simply a Louisiana problem ... (Score:2)
Where Louisiana is going to come up against the biggest hurdle isn't it's own particular issue, but the problem with regard to the entire Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf, and to perhaps a lesser extent, but just as fraught with pitfalls, the West Coast.
This scares the living daylights out of the White House and Congress, because anything they do in Louisiana will be under a huge microscope, will set perhaps irreversible precedents, and is going to have other states lining up for the same treatment.
Paralysis is c
Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's pretty much just New Orleans that sits below sea level.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Basically anything south of Alexandria (which sits dead center of Louisiana) is consistently flooding. This includes many major cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette).
There is really no way to stop this, the state is literally sinking.
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:5, Informative)
"What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like?"
That entire area is in the Mississippi Delta Floodplains. Everything from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico is practically FLOATING on a giant aquifer. All it takes is for New Madrid to go 7.5 or higher to put most of everything from Memphis down to Hattiesburg underwater. A large influx of water on the floodplains further south would probably cause a quicksand effect (and in fact there's tons of that in Louisiana) and simply wash everything away or drag much of it under the ground (as we witnessed with Katrina and New Orleans.)
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:2, Funny)
Don't worry, carbon taxes will fix it. Carbon taxes can fix all environmental problems.
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of carbon taxes is to set a price for CO2 emissions, with the baseline assumption that the market will produce solutions based on creating a sort of "artificial scarcity". If you're a free market advocate, carbon taxes are the way to go, because they are far easier to administer than regulatory regimes, carbon credits, and other regulation-style structures. Upping the price of carbon means alternatives become more attractive, and isn't that the name of the game?
Unless, of course, you don't believe in free markets.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
A few problems with that...
1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.
1a) If the government sets prices, it is nothing more than a de facto regulatory scheme dressed up as commodity.
2) Enforcement? Good luck with that.
3) What's to keep government from requiring individuals (in addition to businesses) to buy these things, as a form of consumption tax?
4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling ind
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the government will have to set the price, so it won't be a truly free market. But seeing as leaving it to the market to actually set the price means oil is obscenely cheap and it's use continues, until costs in other parts of the economy hit damaging levels (ie. how much do you want to spend on house insurance, flood remediation, and rising food costs, etc.) I did say "artificial scarcity".
The fact is that CO2 emissions are trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere, the oceans and the surface of the planet. If you have some alternative solution, explain how it will solve this problem without creating an extremely intrusive regulatory regime, which everyone is going to hate a helluva lot more than simply setting a price on CO2 emissions.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
A few problems with that...
1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.
Only if you think like a Sith.
The government charging you rent to store you carbon in public air is rather a lot more free market than "we're annexing all coal, natural gas, and petroleum related industryis under eminent domain and will be shutting them down.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are)
GP is talking about a carbon tax, not carbon credits. A tax has many benefits and doesn't have the pitfalls you describe above. Best of all, a revenue neutral carbon tax would allow government to lower tax on things they ought to be encouraging like income and sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Government doesn't actually have to set the price. They just cap the availability and an auction process sets the price. Cap and trade ends up being more flexible and responsive to market conditions than a flat rate pollution tax.
The government can manipulate the auction results via supply or reserve tranches of credits, (effectively at cheaper prices) for some nationally important industries or exempt small emitters (like you and your car) while requiring large emitters like an airline or rail conglomerate
Re: (Score:3)
Well, with a carbon tax the government would set the taxation rate, and it would be like any other tax... and that's the problem with carbon taxes: regulatory capture. In the US people who pay a lot of taxes have outsized influence on tax policy.
This is why some environmentalists prefer cap and trade. In that system the government sets limits based on overall carbon emission goals. You'd first try to meet those caps by developing emission reduction technology, and if you reduced more than necessary you c
Re: (Score:3)
carbon tax and cap and trade systems are both valid, free market solutions to the CO2 problem
what is NOT a free market solution is incentives such as electric cars subsidies.
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies do not own the atmosphere. Citizens do. If they want to put things in our property we have every right to charge them rent by means of a tax.
Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Pull up Google earth and look at all of the Oilfield canals in the coastal marsh. The 1st offshore oil well in the world was drilled south of Morgan City and offshore drilling was born there. http://www.rigmuseum.com/charl... [rigmuseum.com] The problem is the US Government has stolen all of the money from offshore drilling in Louisiana's waters from the 1950's to today. States that do not allow drilling in their own waters get a cut of what is rightly Louisianans money. It will not cost the Fed anything. Just give LA the
Re: (Score:2)
Good for you! I hope your "land" ends up being Territorial Waters.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought we were going to have Mexico pay for a big beautiful wall. We'll just make Mexico pay to extend it through Florida. It is the Gulf of *Mexico* after all. While we're at it, we'll annex Hawaii and make it a state, then we can tell those judges out there how to rule.
Re: (Score:2)
That's just silly. Why would Mexico have to pay for the wall? Atlantis should have to pay for the wall since they control the oceans.