New Orleans residents on warning to abandon sinking city: ‘Nobody wants to leave home’

After a recent study found New Orleans is at a ‘point of no return’ amid the climate crisis, some locals say they will ‘only leave if forced to’. But what would it take to stay?

When a study in May concluded that New Orleans has hit a “point of no return” due to the climate crisis that will require people to eventually retreat from their storied yet ultimately doomed city, the local reaction was swift and fiery.

The onward march of rising seas around a sinking city was unsettling, but the study is “more focused on generating publicity and clickbait headlines” than coming up with solutions, said Helena Moreno, New Orleans’ mayor. There is flooding in Miami, and wildfires and earthquakes near San Fransisco, Moreno pointed out, “yet no serious movement exists to declare those cities lost causes”.
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