Aiming for ‘net zero’ carbon emissions – even in Louisiana oil country?

To view the south Louisiana coast from 2,000 feet above is to peer at the conflict between nature and humankind. Lush coastal colors – hues of brown, green, and saltwater blue – blend beneath the small-engine plane being used for an environmental tour. An occasional oil sheen glistens between patches of disappearing marshland, leaks from the pipelines buried beneath the shallow seafloor. Here, at the Gulf of Mexico’s door, one can truly appreciate its beauty.  

Humankind’s touch is evident – from the way an engineered Mississippi River has enabled coastal erosion to the presence of oil spills and sea level rise.  

The Bayou State is at a crossroads. The risk posed by storms, like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Ida last year, is increasing due to the rise in atmospheric greenhouse emissions, scientists say. Yet almost a quarter of the state’s gross domestic product and more than 1 in 10 of its workers are connected to the oil and gas industry, according to the American Petroleum Institute. 

All this underscores the significance of a move this past January, when Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that a state task force had approved a climate action plan – the first such action by a state in the South. The goal is to steer a course toward net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. 

“I feel like we could hit it if we want to,” says Kendall Dix, national policy director at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, referring to the 2050 deadline. “We could probably hit it early, if we wanted to, and if there’s the political will.”

That is an open question, given that implementing some of the key measures will hinge on the legislature and future governors in a state that generally leans toward the Republican Party – which isn’t known for climate urgency.

Still, the plan’s announcement suggests a good measure of support, since the task force represented stakeholders from the petrochemical industry to environmental groups to urban planners. To many here, pure economic interests alone call for action on climate change and its effects on the state.

The tug of coastal flood risks

And the plan didn’t just appear out of the blue, says Virginia Burkett, chief scientist for climate and land use change at the U.S. Geological Survey and a member of Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force. 

Quietly, Louisiana has been adapting to climate change for nearly two decades. That work has been produced through the state’s coastal Trojan horse – a 50-year, $50 billion coastal master plan that acts as a coastal restoration wish list, for which Louisiana lawmakers meet every six years to allocate funds for restoration projects. Legislators convene again in 2023.

“We didn’t call it climate change adaptation, but Louisiana has focused on nature-based coastal protection since the first Coastal Master Plan” in 2007, after Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Burkett says. “Louisiana has been a pioneer in that regard.”  

But at the same time, the sheer scale of the state’s oil and gas industry continued to set it apart. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s carbon emissions (61%) come from its industrial sector, Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies found last year. The researchers noted that Louisiana’s emissions rates were nearly three times the national average. 

Another way to put it: Louisiana ranks 25th among the states in population, but fifth in emissions. 

That’s where Louisiana’s climate action plan comes into play. The plan’s final form combines 80 policy actions framed around three pillars: an expedited shift to renewable wind and solar energy rather than fossil fuels, running more industrial processes by electric power, and switching from carbon to hydrogen-based fuels for the industrial sector. 

Though the task force’s action so far is notable, it lacks means to enforce follow-through on its long-term vision and goals, says Mark Davis, director of Tulane University’s Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. 

“The plan tells you what to do, but it doesn’t tell you what will work,” Dr. Davis adds. “It doesn’t tell you how much time we have.” 

“There’s a lot of stuff coming at us”

Time is of the essence not just in Louisiana’s coastal communities, but across the entire region. After Hurricanes Laura and Delta struck southwest Louisiana in 2020, the city of Lake Charles saw the nation’s highest out-migration. Small towns across the southern Louisiana coast, where the state’s iconic commercial fishing community is a $1 billion industry, are vulnerable to a similar fate. 

“There’s a multitude of factors” as to why households might leave communities in the low-lying region, Dr. Davis says. “But one is that communities and local employers cannot adjust” to an expanding cost of doing business. Lost time due to natural disasters and their fallout is difficult to make up – and living costs, including flood insurance premiums, will likely keep rising.  

“Even if we got to net-zero tomorrow, there’s a lot of stuff coming at us,” Dr. Davis says. 

Even getting there by 2050 is a tall order in this or any state. 

Mr. Edwards is the South’s only Democratic governor, and he’s in his second and final term due to the state’s term limits. Who succeeds him in a wide-open 2023 campaign – and inherits responsibility for the plan’s climate goals – remains unclear. 

“We know that’s going to have devastating consequences for people,” says Mr. Dix at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, referring to the global stakes of missing targets such as those set for the world in the 2015 Paris Agreement. “But we also know that we have to keep fighting for emissions reductions no matter what, because [holding temperature change to] 3 degrees is better than 4 degrees, 2 degrees is better than 3, and 1.75 is better than 2.” 

Under any circumstances, experts say the state’s economy and society face significant changes.

“It will be a fundamentally different coastal Louisiana in the future,” Dr. Davis says. But goals like a climate action plan could allow “an aspect of it to remain functional and recognizable.”