The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded.
Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century”.
Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating, compounded by strengthening hurricanes, also a feature of the climate crisis, and the gradual subsidence of a coastline that has been carved apart by the oil and gas industry.
Southern Louisiana is facing 3-7 metres of sea-level rise and the loss of three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands, which will cause the shoreline “to migrate as much as 100km (62 miles) inland”, thereby stranding New Orleans and Baton Rouge, according to the study, which compared today’s rising global temperatures with a period of similar heat 125,000 years ago that caused a rise in sea level.
Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed comfortingly as the “adults in the room,” a last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes.
John Sterling, whose voice became synonymous with the New York Yankees, has died at the age of 87.
New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and other local officials on Monday condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after federal officers dragged a man out of a hospital building where he had been taken following an arrest, prompting a crowd of protesters to gather outside, where they clashed with police.
The Department of Homeland Security is closing an office responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse in the immigration detention system, according to an internal email to DHS employees obtained by HuffPost.
The fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is under threat of falling apart after President Trump declared that the U.S. would “guide” vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in an effort he called “Project Freedom,” to begin Monday.
The Supreme Court on May 4 reinstated mail-order access to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone, a temporary decision that gives the justices more time to consider the issue.
An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, their lawyer said on Sunday.
