America’s New Climate Delusion
4th September 2024
In some ways, Louisiana’s carbon-capture push fits neatly into the climate plan that the world’s governments recently agreed to. At last winter’s United Nations climate conference, in Dubai, the assembled countries committed to collectively moving away from fossil fuels and aggressively pursuing lower-emissions technologies—including carbon capture. The agreement aims to avoid more of the kind of climate-related damage Louisiana already lives with, as more intense storms and higher sea levels erode the coast and push people inland.
But carbon capture is, if anything, helping the oil and gas industry justify its continued operations, and the march of new LNG terminals along Louisiana’s shoreline. The question of whether climate change will reshape our world has a clear answer: It already has. But the question of how people will reshape our world in response is wide open. One possibility is that people will make dramatic changes—creating entirely new industries meant to curb emissions—and still fail to alter the fate of places such as Louisiana.