Meanwhile in New Orleans

[Brad]

'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/04/new-orleans-sea-levels-relocation-climate-crisis

"Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans's days are still numbered," he added. "It will be surrounded by open water, and you can't keep an island situated below sea level afloat. There's no amount of money that can do that."

[ergophobe]

That's a sobering read.

>> stopped climate change today

Which won't happen, since if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today (which also won't happen), we still have decades of warming built in. I think most people don't understand the latency problem.

>> 3-7m

I guess this includes subsidence and erosion? Projections for sea-level rise by 2100 vary a fair bit by region. Glacial rebound means that Alaska is actually expected to see sea level drop in places. But the worst place in the US is the Western Gulf coast.

But even then, those numbers are way above any estimates I've seen for 2100. Of course...

>> most likely decades rather than centuries

I have to keep reminding myself that 2100 is decades rather than centuries away. A kid born today will be about my brother's age.

Still, I wonder how much population you lose before NOLA collapses. We were seeing that in Detroit where infrastructure in some neighborhoods was being run to 100 houses, but only 45 (or  whatever) were still inhabited and paying bills.

[rcjordan]

^{Recycling the Maxwell Hunter II quote:}

'no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.'

[ergophobe]

That was back when 2 + 2 = 5 was only believed in fiction.

Now we have the ability to delay panic until the event is basically over through the traditional manner of grand denial.

[Brad]

>relocation

My take: even if we do everything proactively to relocate New Orleans in time it won't be "New Orleans". It will be a bunch of fast food crap, prefabs and double wides and brutalist slabs all with negative -11 charm that no tourist or resident will want to see.  All the things that made NOLA a destination will be gone.

Although, I guess we could put up a Disney version with fake facades with no soul somewhere.

[ergophobe]

>> fake facades with no soul

That is no doubt true.

But I think more likely is there will be a long attrition. We will deny that it is actually happening. The next Katrina will hit and this time, lots of people won't come back, but many will. Then the next Katrina hits and the cycle repeats.

At a certain point the infrastructure and the culture collapse.

If we were China, we would build a modern city without soul, but functional and livable, like the cities created as part of the Three Gorges dam project. I don't see the US doing that. We will handle it ad hoc, one case at a time, probably with insufficient support and let them move to wherever they can.

One of my favorite passages in all of literature, from Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides:

We, the people of Colleton, left like sheep, docile and banished to unspeakable newly created towns without the dark resonance of memory to sustain us. We walked the Carolina earth without the wisdom and accumulated suffering of our forebears to instruct us in times of danger or folly. Set adrift, we floated into the driftless suburbs at the edge of cities. We left not like a defeated tribe, but like one brushed with the black veils and garments of extinction. Singly and in pairs, we left that archipelago of green islands that had been spared the worst disfigurements and indemnities of our times. As a town, we had made the error of staying small—and there is no more unforgivable crime in America.

[Brad]

>long attrition

I suspect you are right on this.

[ergophobe]

Contrary to Maxwell Hunter, I believe our main response will not be panic, but hashtags, bumper stickers and speeches.

#NOLAStrong

"Never count New Orleans out" (wild cheers from the crowd).

"Our people have always blah blah blah"

"We have faced adversity and blah blah"