In a lot of places, climate change still feels like a distant threat. But here in New Orleans, it’s already here — not as some abstract warning, but as a daily reality. It’s in our streets, our homes, our wallets, and our skies.
This isn’t just about the next big storm. It’s about what life looks like in a city living on the edge of the water, in a time when the water keeps rising.
1. It’s Not Theoretical Here — It’s Daily Life
Flooded streets after an afternoon rainstorm. Air conditioning units pushed to their limits for weeks on end. More boil water advisories, more brownouts, and more extreme weather events.
In New Orleans, climate change isn’t an emergency to prepare for. It’s something we’ve already adapted to — because we had no choice.
But the cracks are showing. And the pace is accelerating.
2. The Price of Staying Put Is Getting Higher
Homeowners across the city have seen property insurance skyrocket, with some premiums doubling in the last two years. Entire carriers have pulled out of the Gulf Coast market, leaving residents scrambling for coverage — or going without it.
Energy bills are spiking too, especially during brutal heat waves that last longer and start earlier each year. It now costs more than ever to keep your family safe, cool, and dry in the city you’ve always called home.
And for renters, it’s even harder. Landlords pass on climate-related costs, but leases don’t come with protections. Working-class people are being priced out not just by gentrification — but by survival itself.
3. Our Coastline Is Vanishing — and So Is Our First Line of Defense
Louisiana continues to lose a football field of land every hour due to coastal erosion — much of it directly tied to oil and gas development, canal dredging, and rising sea levels.
That disappearing land isn’t just environmental — it’s cultural. Communities that have existed for generations are being swallowed up. Cemeteries are collapsing. Indigenous villages are evacuating. And every acre lost makes the next hurricane more dangerous for the rest of us.
4. The Most Vulnerable Are Carrying the Heaviest Load
The climate crisis hits hardest in places where people have the fewest resources to fight back.
Street musicians, cooks, bus drivers, and construction workers face dangerous heat with little relief. Renters are more likely to live in flood-prone neighborhoods with outdated drainage. Black and brown neighborhoods are more likely to experience urban heat islands, where temperatures stay several degrees higher due to lack of green space and decades of redlining.
This is a climate justice issue — not just an environmental one.
5. City Infrastructure Isn’t Built for This
New Orleans’ aging drainage and power infrastructure can’t keep up. Pumps fail. Sewage backs up. Streets buckle. Even moderate storms can knock out power for days. Our city wasn’t built for this era of climate — and we haven’t invested enough to keep it functional in the one we’re in.
Meanwhile, new construction keeps going up in high-risk areas, luxury development keeps pushing deeper into vulnerable zones, and resilience funding rarely seems to reach the neighborhoods that need it most.
6. This Is the New Normal — But It Doesn’t Have to Be
We need more than sandbags and second lines. We need:
• Massive public investment in green infrastructure and flood resilience
• Affordable housing policies that take climate vulnerability into account
• Real penalties for the industries still wrecking our wetlands
• And leadership that puts people before profits when planning the city’s future
New Orleans has always been a city that fights back. But it’s time to stop fighting alone.
What We Do Now Matters
The truth is, we’re already living with climate change.
The question is whether we’re going to keep surviving it — or finally start responding to it.
We can’t stop every flood, every storm, or every heat wave. But we can demand a city that protects its people, not just its property values.
Because if New Orleans is going to stay above water — literally and politically — we need to stop pretending this is normal. It’s not.
It’s climate change. And it’s here.
