Marble Falls        Living in New Orleans more than twenty years after Katrina, we continue to be ground zero for discussions about rising water and the perils of climate change and global warming.  Recently, a Tulane University real estate professor got a lot of publicity on the issue of rising water here and elsewhere.  Jesse Keenan also wrote a book on these themes, North:  The Future of Post-Climate America.  A lot of the attention was Chicken Little-like with perhaps the sky falling even faster than the water was rising.  Reading the book and talking to Keenan on Wade’s World provided a more sobering and realistic analysis.

Not that it’s all good news, but neither is Keenan the angel of death.  Over the long haul, he certainly believes that there will be “sending” areas and “receiving” areas to handle people forced into climagration, meaning migration triggered by climate.  He believes with evidence that to some degree, it’s already happening, and climate risk is already moving people.  It’s also impacting real estate values with what he estimates is a 7% discount.  When it comes to New Orleans, in a creative and unexpected last chapter for such a well-researched and analytical book, he offers a fictionalized view of life in the “Isle of Orleans” towards the end of the century.  What’s left of the city has a smaller footprint and a huge gap between the rich who can afford to stay and the many, many poor who have to stay, essentially exacerbating the direction we’re already heading.

Climigrants can’t all move to Detroit, and many might not want to do so.  Other options might be Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee.  I asked him about Cincinnati, Ohio, which seemed a possible spot.  Keenan noted that the city was already involved in planning and preparations to serve as a receiving city.  I used to joke that when George Wiley asked me to be the sharp point of the spear for NWRO’s Southern Strategy, I didn’t mind gong to Wilbur Mills’ Arkansas, even though I had never been there, “because at least it wasn’t the Midwest.”  Looks like if I lived long enough; I might have to eat those words.

Among the many interesting things in our conversation and in Keenan’s book, was the discussion on resilience.  Post-Katrina and beyond, resilience has become one of the catchwords for how we are all supposed to be dealing with climate change.  There are books, movies, and exhortations everywhere trumpeting the value of resilience.  I’m not saying it’s a bad thing or that being able to adapt isn’t important, but where Keenan I bonded was in agreement that the resilience cheerleading was often a way for institutions, corporations, and governments to avoid confronting the issue and their responsibilities, and taking the steps and spending the money to protect us.  Resilience, we agreed, was the neo-liberal fix for climate change by shifting the responsibility for preparation and action from the responsible parties, like industry and the duties of institutions and governments, over to individuals and families.

We’re all in this together, and we will do our part, but there’s nothing about this crisis that can be met by individuals and families simply going north and running from it.  We need to collectively stop politicians, corporate execs, and others from denying the obvious and shifting the weight to us.  We didn’t start this mess, and we can’t fix it by ourselves.