A Sustainable Louisiana?

It was humid and stank slightly of garbage and wet shoes. We sat on two remaining chairs, surrounded by mud-covered dishes, drying post-it notes, and kitchen appliances piled two feet high on a single table and counter tops. The entire contents of a kitchen and pantry—when each bowl and pot has to be emptied of slimy water and every can of beans and package of cereal dragged to the curb—is staggering. And that’s just a kitchen. I know I am preaching to a choir that has sung this dirge again and again in these past few weeks. 

Fortunately for Dr. John Day and his wife, who live outside of Zachary on fifty-five acres along the Comite River, their kitchen was the only area of their house destroyed by the mid-August flood, having been built on a lower level than the rest of the house. Given that Dr. Day is emeritus professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU, he and his wife were careful, back in the mid 1970s, to build their home eight to nine feet above the flood plain, “which is practically on a mountain in Louisiana,” he said. “We are 120 feet above sea level here.”

Comparing themselves to the folks who ignored the obvious risks by building in flood-prone areas of this flood-prone state, Day said, “We were smug about it—even arrogant.” But as he and tens of thousands of South Louisiana residents discovered, even hundred-year flood zone maps and an abundance of feet-above-the-flood-plain caution does not guarantee that you will stay high and dry. “Now, I am a recovering arrogant person,” Day added. “I thought we’d made the rational decision. But we hadn’t.” 

Day was making these chagrined reflections on the heels of writing a book with co-author Charles Hall called America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions: Surviving the 21st Century Megatrends. The book, written for non-scientists, is wide-ranging and cross-disciplinary, recounting the historical, biophysical, economic, and social underpinnings of certain large-scale, rapidly emerging shifts, what Day and Hall call megatrends, within systems intimately connected to energy-ravenous human populations. 

[ We recommend "Giant Salvinia: Beasts of the Southern waterways"]

Day and Hall spend a great deal of ink connecting the dots between the megatrends, a necessary expense given their complex interdependence. Five chapters offer up reams of data on climate change (incidentally, July 2016 was the hottest month on record globally according to NASA), declining ecosystem goods and services (farms, fisheries, raw materials), declining reserves of accessible fossil fuels, the environmental load of modern food production systems, and the fallacies of modern economic theory. The picture the authors paint is not rosy; these systems are trending along unsustainable paths, at least in terms of their ability to sustain human populations. And, as the book describes, their unsustainability can essentially be traced to one persistent culprit: fossil fuels. 

But for all its measured seriousness, America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions is not a pessimistic tome predicting doom and gloom. It is a book in which the authors have taken pains to provide plenty of references, maps, data, and explanation, so readers might better understand the lay of the proverbial land. Hall and Day, above all, seem earnest—earnest in their desire to help us all consider how we might better plan to live in this uncharted twenty-first century world. It is clear, one way to not live in it, is to continue to expect things to proceed as they have in the past. 

One of the primary theses presented in the book is a challenge to the commonly held theory that dense urban metropolises are the most sustainable types of communities. According to this popular model, per capita energy consumption in large cities compares favorably with consumption in less-dense areas. So, the per capita CO₂ footprint of a New Yorker is ten metric tons per year while a Louisianan’s footprint is fifty tons. However, according to the authors, this is a false accounting in that “very little of the energy and industrial products produced in Louisiana, Texas, and North Dakota and similar states are used personally by the citizens of these states.  … So, to be fair, most of the industrial CO₂ emissions should be removed from the balance sheets of Texas and Louisiana and other “energy” states (where citizens use relatively little of what is produced) and added to the emissions of the states that are end users, directly or indirectly, of the products of energy production and industrial activity.”

It’s a zero sum game, they explain—people, whether in cities or outlying areas, consume energy; and fossil fuel, the energy source that supplanted the primarily solar-powered economy relied upon by our ancestors, is becoming increasingly harder to find. The most important factor in the sustainability of a community in the coming century is going to be its regional proximity to important resources. If any community depends too heavily on far-flung regions or countries to meet its needs, it will fail. 

[You should also read "Unlike almost every other place along the Louisiana coast, land is growing, not disappearing, at the base of this old canal."]

Applying their calculations, the two academics evaluated several different types of cities. From Cedar Rapids to Las Vegas, New Orleans to Asheville, twelve cities were ranked with respect to their sustainability in the face of the megatrends. Areas with large, dense populations, especially along the East Coast, all coastal regions, and the entire southwestern United States are considered the least sustainable, as illustrated on the map, which occupies the cover of the book. In the coming decades, Day and Hall predict, large-scale changes in these areas will likely take place. 

The recent floods caught everyone off guard—even the smug professor who just wrote a book about how not to be caught off guard. To be sure, when you’re trying to find a roof for your family to live under, mourn irreplaceable losses, and replace the thousand things that made you feel safe and secure in the world, day-by-day is the mantra to live by. But in the coming weeks, months, and years the horizon will grow longer, and we will need to grapple with broader, farther-reaching decisions about the long term. Perhaps it will mean increasing your insurance coverage, reducing your energy consumption, or exacting responsible policy-making from your legislators. Whatever the case, there are things we can do, as individuals and as communities; but the time to act is now. As Day explained, sitting amid the chaos of his dismantled kitchen, “You can imagine a sustainable Louisiana, but it won’t look like it looks now.” 

John W. Day and Charles Hall, with contributions from Eric Roy, Matt Moerschbaecher, Chris D’Elia, David Pimentel, and Alejandro Yáñez. (2016) America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions: Surviving the 21st Century Megatrends. New York: Copernicus Books.