I return to visit New Orleans about three to four times per year. On every visit, someone will half-jokingly ask me, "So when are you going to leave crazy California and move back?" I simply reply, "When are you going to flee Louisiana?" I have a convenient excuse in that I work in tech, and my family members convince themselves that's the only reason I don't move back. I tell them that I'm never moving back, but they stubbornly hold on to hope. My family isn't the stereotypical American-without-a-passport untraveled, uncultured types. My sisters have lived in Paris, London, Oregon, Maine, Maryland, DC, Texas, Georgia etc. My mom lived in Barcelona for stretches and speaks three languages. Yet they all end up back in the New Orleans area. Family bonds are that strong. Maybe I'm cold and too calculating for not living there with them.
After every good visit with the kids, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife prods me, "Hey maybe we should live closer to your family." I just reply "No." The answer is simple: Louisiana, and New Orleans especially, is doomed as an ongoing entity. Call it fatalism, call it blindness, or call it stupidity, whatever the reason -- the people of Louisiana just keep on doing the same thing with the same reaction every time something bad happens; "Oh that's such a shame."
New Orleans' nickname is the "big easy"; I call it "the tiny difficult". Nothing ever changes. Progress is slow and glacial. Everyone knows everyone and has their nose in everyone else's business. You live a good life in Old Metairie with a nice weekend home in rural Louisiana. You find out that the wilderness near your home has recently been purchased. The land hasn't ever been touched, so you do some digging into it. You find out that they're going to clearcut the forest and wetlands and build an "oil services facility" on it with "mixed use commercial and residential" on the other side. This worries you because of the loss of wetlands and buffer zone (the forest would soak up flood waters in storms), and you're worried about pollution from the increased land use. You object to the project formally because you're well off and have some free time. Only later, you find out that your opponents are your very rich neighbors in Old Metairie -- doctors and lawyers speculating on land with their friends in the oil business. They start saying bad things and calling you names like a tree hugger and eco-mentalist. Others say that you're blocking progress and aren't thinking of the community and jobs. Eventually, the crooked tentacles of corruption will make their way through the bureaucracies and you will lose. Your neighbors will make more money, "progress" will happen, and you'll now deal with floods annually on a property that never flooded in hundreds of years.
The craziest thing about this tale isn't that it's true. It's that the very people profiting from this and pulling the levers are in the state. They're not always far-off corporations. They're your neighbors: pillars of local industry and commerce who are lauded for their success. It's insane to me that these people are looting and ravaging the very land that they live, and that they will continue to live on. It's one thing to be a wild tycoon, burn the locals and flee. But they're knowingly (or blindingly) hurting themselves, their families, and future generations. Maybe it's the constant layer of corruption in the state at every level. Maybe there's a sense of fatalism. But the very people whose livelihoods are on the line just don't care. One would think that Louisianans would be the most read, most vested people in the US on the topic of climate change. They're not. They don't believe in it. Despite losing all the barrier islands, wetland loss, extinction of species from habitat loss, facing worse storms every year, etc. They just think of their jobs and their family. People don't like being told that their job and way of life is going away because of their own ignorance, but it's the truth.
There's not much that will save Louisiana at this point. Maybe the federal government (not in this administration) will step in and help? The best thing that happened to the New Orleans public school system was Katrina (the feds took over the local school system and turned it around). It pains me to write this. I love my homeland. I truly do. I love my family. I love my culture. I just can't be there. Especially now as I tend to my father's estate after he passed away at a relatively young age from a hyper rare cancer (squamous carcinoma of the pancreas). I like breathing clean air. I like drinking (relatively) clean water. I like being healthy. You won't get those things in Louisiana, and sadly, no one with any clout seems to give a damn.