When a study in May concluded that New Orleans had hit a “point of no return” due to the climate crisis that would require people to eventually retreat from their storied yet ultimately doomed city, the local reaction was swift and fiery.
The onward march of rising seas around a sinking city was unsettling, but the study was “more focused on generating publicity and clickbait headlines” than coming up with solutions, said Helena Moreno, New Orleans’s mayor. There was flooding in Miami, and wildfires and earthquakes near San Fransisco, Moreno pointed out, “yet no serious movement exists to declare those cities lost causes”.
