Native American tribe to relocate from Louisiana coast as sea levels rise

[WhiteTara]

http://news.yahoo.com/native-american-tribe-relocate-louisiana-coast-sea-levels-231726681.html

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A small Native American community in coastal Louisiana is to be resettled after losing nearly all its land partly due to rising seas, a first in the United States.

The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a Native American tribe living in the Louisiana coastal wetlands, has lost some 98 percent of its land since the 1950s.

This is the first time an entire community has had to be relocated due in part to rising sea levels, said Marion McFadden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The land loss is also due to factors such as erosion and sediment mismanagement, a Louisiana official said.

The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw have lived and fished on the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana's coastal south since the 1800s, a tribe's spokesman said.

But land loss has caused the island to shrink from some 15,000 acres to a strip of about a quarter-mile wide by a half-mile long, a study by Northern Arizona University shows.

But don't worry...climate change isn't real.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. The will not be the last.

[WhiteTara]

2. No, this is just beginning.

[Mike__M]

3. No, It won't be the last

But it's no surprise that it's the first.

Meanwhile on another coast: http://www.democraticunderground.com/11911115

[Xithras]

4. Don't blame climate change for things that have nothing to do with climate change.

The destruction of the Louisiana wetlands is directly attributable to oil drilling (which caused land subsidence), logging (which removed many of the cypress groves that previously shielded the wetlands from the open sea) and levee building by the U.S. government which deprived the wetlands of the silt it needed to replenish itself every year. While efforts have been made recently to protect the wetlands and reintroduce silt to rebuild them, neither has occurred in the portion of the wetlands where this tribe was located.

Assigning the destruction of these lands to an ephemeral boogeyman like "global warming", where we get to assign blame to everyone and nobody at the same time, lets the real culprits off scot-free for their environmental crimes. The oil companies did this. The logging companies did this. Our misguided government geo-engineering projects did this.

More importantly, WE COULD FIX THIS if we really wanted to, and if we were willing to commit the resources to doing so. But "global warming" gives people a convenient scapegoat that allows us to justify doing NOTHING to protect THIS island, THESE people, or THAT marshland. If the culprit is global warming, then it's "humanities fault". Then it's "something we have to live with, because...lack of regulation or something".

[tabasco]

5. People who use terms like "ephemeral boogeyman"

don't like science.

[Xithras]

11. Or they are just educated.

The degrees on my wall confirm that I am, in fact, a scientist.

Global warming is quite real, but it's become a scapegoat that allows corporations and governments to excuse destructive behavior and poor planning by writing off their environmental damage as the side effect of "global warming".

"Hey, it's not our fault that we cut down all those trees allowing storm surges to directly impact the vulnerable marshes! Hey, it's not our fault that we pumped out millions of barrels of oil and the ground subsided 3 feet, allowing saltwater to invade the ecosystem and kill off the stabilizing foliage! Hey, it's not our fault that we built levees that destroyed the freshwater/saltwater balance developed over millions of years! It was global warming! It's your fault for driving an SUV!"

Global warming has become an ephemeral boogeyman to many apologists for human environmentally destructive behavior. Rather than take responsibility (and face the potential criminal and financial consequences) for their crimes, the perpetrators and their apologists have increasingly taken to blaming global warming for all the worlds environmental ills. While global climate change is certainly wreaking havoc on the world, blaming it for every environmental ill is inaccurate and counterproductive. By deflecting the cause to something that CAN'T be addressed by state, local, or even national governments, it allows those governments to turn a blind eye to it.

Global warming isn't destroying the Louisiana bayou. Destructive human development, resource extraction, and general stupidity are. More importantly, unlike global warming, the destruction of the Louisiana bayou is something we could fix right away, if we actually cared enough to do so.

[tabasco]

14. I have not seen anyone blame deforestation on global warming.

However, I have seen scientific evidence that deforestation contributes to global warming.

But I totally agree with you that man's treatment of the biosphere has been incredibly stupid and, IMO, evil. I worked in the Louisiana bayous and the oil patch and saw the destruction first-hand. There is no excuse. Man is simply a murderous, destructive ape. Too bad gorillas didn't gain intelligence and technology first, they would have been much wiser.

[WhiteTara]

16. Thanks for this perspective.

I can see what you are talking about and I agree that this sounds more like a case of mismanagement than overall climate change. Thanks for the education.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

6. Exactly. Nothing to do with climate change.

Between the oil industry and trying to protect the city of New Orleans, we've done a lot of damage to coastal Louisiana and its wonderful bio-diversity.

[tabasco]

15. As much as Louisiana right-wing idiots screech about the evil fedrul gubmint,

it's the fedrul gubmint keeping the Mississippi flowing through Nawlins.

Personally, I believe there should be a transition to allow the river to flow down the Atchafalaya, like it wants. The expenditure and effort in the Old River Control Structure is stupid and doomed to ultimate failure.

[Dont call me Shirley]

10. While all your points are valid, global warming is a factor as well.

[Igel]

13. Unless the land was about an inch above sea level in the late '40s,

not so much.

Yes, it's a factor. It's just not a dominant factor.

Or an important factor.

We could claim all the huge storms that have gone through, but recently not so much. (Yeah, we had predictions. That's the damnable thing about hasty and rash predictions masquerading as science. When they fail, it sounds like the theory's been falsified. The predictions were made out of political "the end is near" rhetorical terrorism. Perhaps in the next 8 years the nastiness and frequency of the hurricanes will ramp up. Perhaps not. But the sane prediction would have been that over the next 50 or 60 years big, nasty storms will become more common. Nobody wanted sane when rhetorical fear tactics were necessary to accomplish immediate-term ends.)

Even in this article, you'd think that sea levels rising would be an important factor, the way the rhetoric goes.

[Dont call me Shirley]

19. Global warming began with the advent of fossil fuels in the 1800's.

[malaise]

7. Well tell NOAA to focus on the weather

and leave climate change alone.

[lpbk2713]

8. There are still Miccosukees in the Everglades.

Time is running out on them as well.

[Rebkeh]

9. POC are the first to feel the effects

The way that happened here is consistent with global trends.

[KamaAina]

12. The entire nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific is perparing to evacuate its 10,000 residents to NZ

[NightWatcher]

17. Wait till Miami goes underwater in a couple of decades

Many of us will be alive to see that

[Jeffersons Ghost]

18. Climate change is real and real fast

Changes are occurring faster than scientists are able to document...