What does it mean to live in a disappearing place? For Pioneer Works’ Broadcast, Brad Bolman, a professor of history and environmental studies at Tulane University, writes about New Orleans, the shifting borders between land and sea, and the political and economic forces that continue to shape the city’s fate in a time of climate catastrophe.
If Los Angeles is the city that has been imaginatively destroyed again and again in film and TV, as Thom Andersen argues in Los Angeles Plays Itself, New Orleans is the one that has been destroyed countless times in reality. We have survived worse and rebuilt before, many insisted. We’re staying.
It was a reaction as understandable emotionally as it was disconnected from environmental reality. But that gap is a feature of life in the Crescent City. As I watched my first Mardi Gras parade this spring, junk falling in never-ending torrents from brightly decorated floats, a friend sympathetically interjected, “This must be driving you crazy.” What they meant was that as someone who teaches about environmental history but isn’t from here, I must be especially affected by the throwaway culture of the city’s most famous fête and its tons and tons of plastic beads, made from the same fossil fuels that are causing sea levels to rise around us.
More stories on New Orleans
Submitting to the Beast
“A father and son in New Orleans—feasting and flaneuring.”
The Car-Crash Conspiracy
“High-speed accidents, crooked lawyers, and poor people desperate for cash—it was the kind of scheme that could have been cooked up only in the Big Easy.”
Saving a New Orleans Banksy
“How a truck driver, a hotelier, and an art conservator brought a beloved street mural back into public view.”
Life Before Katrina—And After It
“The storm destroyed the home where I grew up, and changed New Orleans forever.”
The Game Is Played With Great Feeling
“How Pokémon can save the world, one Pikachu at a time.”
How to Save a Dog
“For nearly a year, a motley crew scoured New Orleans for a shaggy white mutt named Scrim.”
