Fine. We'll Just Drown.
Caution! Bumpy road ahead! Photo of the 2026 Mosiac Parade by Scott Saltzman for FQJ
May 2026Scientists say New Orleans has reached the "point of no return." In this op-ed, a local writer responds like locals do – with humor and with heart.
– by kd gros
This column is underwritten in part by Cool Murphy Real Estate
A study came out two weeks ago in a journal called Nature Sustainability (which I didn’t read immediately because I was at a crawfish boil). The study says New Orleans has reached a “point of no return.”
The scientists, who I’m sure are lovely people who have never eaten a dressed roast beef po’boy over a sink, say we need to begin relocating all 360,000 residents immediately because the Gulf of Mexico is going to surround us before the end of the century.
The Gulf of Mexico? Coming to get us? Sir, the Gulf of Mexico is where we vacation.
The study notes that Louisiana loses one football field of land every hundred minutes. Ummm… The Saints haven’t had a football field worth keeping since 2009. This isn’t new information and we are coping just fine, thank you very much.
The researchers insist on something they’re calling a “managed retreat,” which is a coordinated, planned relocation of residents away from the city before the water arrives.
Try walking up to a man in a Who Dat jersey who is currently eating a Lucky Dog while simultaneously yelling at a referee and saying, “Excuse me, sir, have you considered a managed retreat?” He’ll offer you a beer and think you said something about a receiver.
Catching a game in Cosimo’s Bar in the Quarter, 2019
The scientists specifically warned that if we don’t do a managed retreat, people will just “trickle out over time” in an “uncoordinated mess.” And they said this like it’s a bad thing.
Uncoordinated mess is our brand. We’ve been an uncoordinated mess since 1718 and we have a tourism industry built entirely on it. “Uncoordinated mess” is what we put on our brochures.
And have you seen our road construction? Have you seen our drainage system? Have you seen us try to run a red light at the same time as the person across from us, who is also running the red light?
One of the co-authors said, (and I quote), “It’s like a time bomb.” Well, the city of New Orleans heard the term “time bomb” and started planning a second line for it. The theme is going to be “Point of No Return.” The krewe already has a name. There will be flambeaux. Someone’s making jambalaya for everyone.
The Krew of Mayahuel in the 2026 Mosaique parade through the French Quarter, photograph by Scott Saltzman for FQJ
The scientists don’t fully appreciate that New Orleans residents have a deeply sophisticated threat assessment system that’s been refined over three hundred years of hurricanes, floods, occupying armies, plagues, corrupt officials, and the I-10/610 split, and that system’s one setting is Yeah, but I ain’t leaving though.
We ran this exact calculation during Betsy. We ran it during Camille. We ran it during Katrina – although some of us recalculated mid-storm and revised our answers. We ran it during COVID when the CDC said New Orleans was the most dangerous city in America and we said okay and then held a jazz funeral for the jazz funerals we couldn’t hold. A peer-reviewed journal for damn sure isn’t gonna be the thing that moves us.
Royal Street on Mardi Gras Day, 2021, during the pandemic. Photo by Andrew Simoneaux for French Quarter Journal
The study also projects that sea levels could rise between three and seven meters, which would push the shoreline 62 miles inland and surround both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Now that I would pay to see. Baton Rouge – the city that has spent its entire existence being smug about being slightly more north – also surrounded by ocean? I’m not saying the apocalyptic flooding of coastal Louisiana is a silver lining. I’m saying I’ve driven through Baton Rouge traffic on I-10 and I’m open to all outcomes.
The study says political leaders are only willing to discuss relocation “in private meetings” and not in public forums. That’s because they know us.
The second any Louisiana politician says “managed retreat” at a public meeting, they’re going to spend forty-five minutes getting yelled at by a guy named Boudreaux who has six generations buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 and would like to see a scientist come down here and tell his mémère she needs to relocate. (The mémère has been dead for decades, but that’s not the point. The point is you don’t tell a New Orleans family to leave their dead.)
This 1885 engraving by John Durkin shows St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on All Saints Day, creative commons
I want to be responsible here, so I’ll say the science is real. The land is sinking. The water is rising. The wetlands are gone.
This is not a joke.
But the true thing underneath my jokes is that every person who has ever bought a house in this city has done so with a full and complete understanding that they were purchasing property in a bowl, below sea level, in hurricane alley, in a state where the ground itself is actively disappearing, and we bought it anyway.
The scientists want us to have a plan. And our plan is to be here until we aren’t, and to have a very good time in the interim, and to make sure there’s good food.
And there’s always good food.
French Quarter Fest, 2026, by Shawn Fink for French Quarter Journal
If you’d like to donate to Louisiana coastal restoration efforts, visit the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana or click this link: https://www.crcl.org/donate/.
If you’d like to relocate, Charlotte is apparently very nice.