Thibodaux, Louisiana
Virginia
New Orleans, Louisiana
Gen X
I’ve lived in New Orleans for 20 years. My wife is originally from Bayou Blue and grew up here. We definitely don’t plan to stay in Louisiana largely because of land loss and climate change. We’re still dealing with the effects from Hurricane Ida, both financially and in workload. I can’t imagine staying here into my retirement age. We also have only one child, and I don’t want to put that much burden on him for every hurricane, so for now I’m here because I love it, it’s a great culture, it’s a great location, and it’s where I want to be, but I don’t see myself staying here past retirement age, which will probably be an early retirement because of it as well. It just gets more difficult every year and I think that the federal government cares less and less every year, and it’s a dying culture. For me directly, it’s financial and hurricanes hitting harder, but I think the way it affects us on a larger scale is really out here. New Orleans as well, but really out here and Acadiana where you have a distinct unique regional culture, which is what America used to be defined by everywhere, and we have very few of those left in this country, this being one of them. It’s going to continually be hit over and over again not just by hurricanes, but due to the loss of population because of the economics of those hurricanes. As more and more people move away, there’s less and less people here, the culture fades, it homogenizes and Americanizes like it did in Iowa and Ohio. Ohio, once the great land of German immigrants in America, is now the land of McDonald’s, and I fear that we face that.
I’m overly cynical at this point. I think there are certainly things that can be done, you’d have to talk to people in sciences about exact things. I’ve seen some pretty convincing arguments for river diversion. Global warming is hard to overcome, but the soot and silt from the river have been diverted for a century and that has a huge impact. I don’t see any will from either political party, either local or national to do anything about that. I don’t see the will on the federal level to really care about what’s being lost here. I think both parties see us as an extraction colony. I’m pretty skeptical. It’s Louisiana, there’s always gonna be somebody sitting with their crawfish in a cooler, being themselves, and it’s gonna be beautiful and it’s gonna be amazing, but there are gonna be less and less people every year, and I think the best thing we can do is push our representatives to care, but I’m pretty skeptical about that happening.