Port Fourchon: perpetual motion machine

Several Louisiana newspapers carried the Associated Press version of the Baton Rouge Advocate article on the Loren Scott & Associates study on the economic importance of the Port Fourchon energy complex.

In the style that has become expected of studies for hire, the report lays out the case for which it was produced, namely that getting more money to raise the road to the the port is a very important project. However, in making the case, it ignores the reason that the road must be raised — a sinking coast and rising sea levels.

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Advocate article:

Port Fourchon services 90 percent of the deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and even a brief interruption of services would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, a study released Thursday shows.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which commissioned the study, hopes the information will help convince Congress to fund upgrades and repairs to the area’s levee system and the $250 million shortfall for an elevated highway and bridge from Golden Meadow to Port Fourchon, port director Ted Falgout said.

It's understandable that the Port Fourchon study would not mention the reasons the road must be raised are due, at least in part, to the significant energy industry contributions to the destruction of coastal marsh lands and the climate change producing the rising seas.

So, raising the road to Port Fouchon (and, probably, the levees around the port, as well) is something of a perpetual motion machine.

The port serves the energy industry that is drilling for oil and gas in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Those fuels add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as they are burned, thereby contributing to the warming of the earth, which speeds the rate at which sea levels rise. The rising sea levels (combined with the continued sinking of Louisiana's coastal wetlands) will make it necessary to raise the road to the port and the levees around it.

What's wrong with this picture? The energy industry wants the public to pay the price for mitigating the impact processes to which their own work are prime contributors. Yet, the energy industry as a whole and companies working — and profiting — from the operation of Port Fourchon (pdf) are some of the most ardent opponents of public policies that would slow the rate of climate change.

Louisiana is quite literally on the front line of the climate change front. The impacts of climate change are being felt here first — sinking land, disappearing marshes, rising sea levels are each impacts of this larger process.

Like Shell Oil and other energy companies championing a tax-payer funded repair of the damage they inflicted on our coast, the plea to save Port Fourchon is a shameless cry for help from an industry that refuses to accept responsibility for its own actions.

So, yes, save Port Fourchon. But, at least require that the energy companies and the companies that support them implement policies that mitigate the contributions that they make to the processes that require the need to save the port to begin with.

Condition support for saving Port Fourchon on their support for policies that would wean our economy from carbon-based energy.

Something about Climate Change that Mary Does Not Get

Will someone please tell Senator Mary Landrieu that she represents the state of Louisiana and not the oil and gas industries!

Landrieu was the lone Democrat to vote against ending a Republican filibuster against provisions in the energy bill which would have mandated that utilities get at least 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The bill, in its final form, does some good things, but it could have done much more if not for Landrieu's placing of the interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the interests of the people of the state she was elected to represent.

Why do I say Landrieu voted to defend the interests of a leading industry over the interests of the state? For starters, there is the matter of the accelerating rate of climate change, which is speeding the melting of the polar ice cap and the cap in Greenland.

Less ice, means more water in the oceans, which translates into rising sea levels. Louisiana's coast is very flat. Rising sea levels combined with sinking land is a bad combination for us.

How bad? Check out the images from the University of Arizona at the top of this post.

The image on the left is what Louisiana's relationship with the Gulf of Mexico was like earlier this year. The image on the right shows the impact of a one-meter rise (a little more than three feet) would have on our state. Look at it closely (you can find another set of the images here).

Orleans and Jefferson parishes are inundated. Terrebonne and LaFourche, too. Gulf waters reach up to I-10 in West Baton Rouge Parish. Most of Cameron and Vermilion parishes are under water.

Oh, well, you might say, "that won't happen for a century. We'll be gone and someone else will have figured out what to do."

Wrong!

The pace of the melting is increasing.

Well, then, it's hopeless you might say.

Wrong again!

McKinsey & Company (the business consultants) recently released a report (PDF) that substantial progress could be made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next 23 years without disrupting the U.S. economy. It focuses on increased energy efficiency as a means of reducing the growth in the release of greenhouse gases.

But, McKinsey report states that the measures that need to be taken include the very kind of energy production shift that Landrieu wrong-headedly blocked by supporting the Republican filibuster against the energy bill:

5. Reducing the carbon intensity of electric power production — 800 megatons to 1,570 megatons. This potential derives from a shift toward renewable energy sources (primarily wind and solar), additional nuclear capacity, improved efficiency of power plants, and eventual use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies on coal-fired electricity generation.

This is McKinsey & Company writing! It's only radical if you're so deep in the back pocket of the energy industry that you think their farts are perfume.

Again, why is this important? Go to the images at the top again.

Louisiana, due to our geology, topography and geography, is going to be among the areas most dramatically affected by rising sea levels (not the only one, to be sure!).

It would be nice if any of our elected officials would give even the slightest indication that they understand what is at stake here.

The senior Senator from Louisiana has gone all 'flat earth' on climate change at a time when we need her to be rational. Maybe her polling numbers have unnerved her?