Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now
- Historically that doesn’t make sense. Usually by not relocating you can extract greater concessions from your fellow citizens. As an example, if you left Rancho Palos Verdes when signs showed up you could have bought an equivalent home. But if you waited for your property there to be condemned, you received money equivalent to the maximum of the price in the last three years. The latter is obviously superior to maximize your own capital with the bonus that you get to live there until it is dangerous.
Likewise, the flood plains of Texas are cheap and nice to live in when there are no floods and when floods are imminent you have sufficient warning that you can evacuate and the federal government will compensate you. You can then go back and live there. This one is harder because it is unpleasant to move and you don’t receive the inflated price but it does incentivize some on the border.
Of course the fires in Malibu are a story of going too far in the wrong time. If they’d had a sympathetic administration in the federal government likely some kind of compensation scheme could have been worked out. So you have to work on the politics and the economics.
by austin-cheney
4 subcomments
- It’s more than rising oceans. New Orleans is sinking rapidly just like Jakarta.
The southern third of LA has ground composed of spongy organic material deposited by rivers since the last ice age as opposed to solid ground largely made up of silicates and minerals covering bedrock.
- This article and the one before it are based on a paper in nature that says if the seas rise 10ft-23ft that New Orleans is screwed. Notably it does not predict this, just says that if sea levels rise the city is screwed. Which it is!
But so is lower Manhattan, Miami, 60% of the land in the Netherlands, almost all of Bangladesh, along with numerous other places.
Now 3m-7m is vastly higher than any current predictions, but hey lets scare monger about a single city!
by master_crab
2 subcomments
- What, do people not remember Katrina? That was the sign to move, and it was 20 years ago.
- As the song goes: "New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim"
by kj4211cash
2 subcomments
- Oh hey, something I used to work on. The story here is coastal erosion / land subsidence much more than it is sea level rise, although that is a contributing factor. The land subsidence has been caused by Engineering works of the past, including the construction of levees and floodwalls around the city. When I worked on this a decade ago, we were already telling people outside of the city to move and spending a fortune to protect people inside the city. The most cost-effective option is often getting people to move, but good luck convincing everyone. Also this is such a shame because New Orleans is one of the most unique, charming places in the US.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Earlier this month:
'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48015218
by Mistletoe
3 subcomments
- I hope there is some plan to thwart this, as New Orleans is my favorite city on Earth. Truly unique culture and history against the homogenization and suburbanization of America. If you’ve never visited, please go.
- I wonder if they would even have to be relocated if they had the water management expertise and functional government of Denmark?
I think the article didn’t talk enough about how Louisiana is far too poor to undertake a planned relocation without a vast amount of federal help.
Then, you’ve got the fact that Louisiana’s political leadership is some of the worst in the country. The article touched on it but arguably didn’t discuss it enough. These are not people who will do anything that benefits constituents. Arguably they aren’t even benefiting their donors by burying their head in the sand, although I imagine their donors have accepted that they’ll just leave New Orleans with their profits in hand when the time comes.
- Aside from rising seas, there is regional destruction of protective barrier islands from poor resource management and sedimentary processes that should have moved the agriculture transshipment activities of BR/NO to the Atchafalaya River in the recent past. This is easier said than done and there is a strong video about how the Mississippi’s current path has been maintained by the Old River Complex:
https://youtu.be/XpjPe4kbpYo
Edit: better video
- Link to paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01820-z
It appears that if you go through the link in this Guardian article, you will get free access to the full paper:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/04/new-orleans-...
- Rebuild it like Venice: imagine canals, building water passageways, and pirogues carrying tourists up and down the romantic Bourbon Street, all the former riff-raff washed away and only paying businesses remain. The sewer smell of Venice provides a good model.
- The sea level is growing because Amsterdam is stealing land from the sea
by warumdarum
0 subcomment
- Ccp central planner think like nonsense. People will just move on house boats and ponton cellar houses. New-new orleans will be right where it is now, near the river, even when the river changes course.
- relocation requires assistance, people living paycheck-to-paycheck cannot just up and move out of city/state
take some of that $1 BILLION PER DAY being used to bomb innocent kids and civilians in Iran, soon Cuba, and help innocent people in your own country relocate
if the current administration is in charge the week New Orleans is about to go undersea they will "solve the problem" by banning FEMA from doing anything or just defunding it to $1/day
- the people they refer to are certainly the least capable.
by redsocksfan45
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- > the city must start the relocation process now to avoid chaos.
I've no reason to doubt this is absolutely true.
that's not what they're gonna do though....
> The region has “crossed the point of no return,” the paper’s authors wrote, adding New Orleans “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.”
sorry, Gulf of what ? /s
- [dead]
by _-_-__-_-_-
0 subcomment
- Anyone who could afford to leave has left long ago. This is, partially, a class issue. It's very sad.
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