Climate change will likely wreck their livelihoods but they still don't buy the science

[turbinetree]

In 50 years, the region near where I grew up, Cameron Parish in south-west Louisiana, will likely be no more. Or rather, it will exist, but it may be underwater, according to the newly published calculations of the Louisiana government. Coastal land loss is on the upswing, and with each hurricane that sweeps over the region, the timeline is picking up speed.

As a result, Cameron, the principal town in this 6,800-person parish (as counties are called in Louisiana), could be the first town in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels and flooding. So it’s here one would expect to feel the greatest sense of alarm over climate change and its consequences.

Instead, Cameron has earned a different kind of fame: it’s the county that, percentage-wise, voted more in favor of Trump than any other county in the US in last year’s election. Nearly 90% of the population did.

Why would some of the people most vulnerable to climate change vote for a politician skeptical of climate change’s existence? Why would people in Cameron Parish support policies that could ruin them?

To get to the root of this question, I slipped my tennis shoes into knee-high marsh waders, navigated the ropes on a rusty shrimp boat, and ate mountains of fried seafood. I spoke to people living different and yet parallel lives in Cameron Parish, where timelines are defined as pre-storm or post-storm, and where people kindly addressed me as Miss Shannon.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/18/louisiana-climate-change-skeptics-donald-trump-support

[lapfog_1]

1. not the first town

there was already a small town in Alaska that had to relocate due to rising ocean levels

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/24/the-remote-alaskan-village-that-needs-to-be-relocated-due-to-climate-change/?utm_term=.49349e366340

[turbinetree]

2. The same thing of the climate getting" warmer in Greenland

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-greenlands-northernmost-village-a-melting-arctic-threatens-the-age-old-hunt/2017/04/29/764ba9be-1bb3-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.c2d320adaa7f

[procon]

3. What a frustratingly depressing article.

It documents the entrenched willful ignorance and cognitive dissidence of people who believe Republican lies. The impossible combination of rightwing 'thinking' is the result of decades of masterful brainwashing through a coordinated propaganda campaign. These people, including most of their fellow Republicans, are beyond salvaging.