It's about time

This was announced at the end of last week.  It's a welcome development but well overdue as well.

The City of New Orleans has joined six southern Louisiana parishes by filing a lawsuit against oil and gas companies over their role in coastal land loss, Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration announced late Friday.

The suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, echoes other efforts to hold the energy industry accountable for damage done to wetlands and marshes through decades of drilling and dredging.

By wearing away those natural protective barriers, the industry has contributed to making New Orleans more vulnerable to storm surge and threatens the very existence of the city, Cantrell said in a statement.

"New Orleans has been harmed," she said. "The people of our city have been harmed, and our way of life is threatened by the damage done to our coastal wetlands.”

It's taken almost six years for the city to get in on the multi-parish lawsuit which itself was supposed to be the way forward now that  SLFPA-E's suit has been dismissed for lack of #standing. But since the former Mayor of New Orleans had a sister who was on her way to becoming an oil and gas lobbyist this hasn't been a city priority.

Speaking of industry influence, I wanted to point out this very long New Yorker article that's being passed around a bunch this month.  It isn't a terrible article. But it also greatly deemphasizes the role of man made climate change and the physical destruction of the Louisiana wetlands brought on specifically by oil and gas exploration over the years.  It mentions those things. But researchers often argue industry activity has been the most significant cause or accelerant of coastal loss by far over the past century.   The consequences of fossil fuel use and extraction are becoming more and more dire with every year that passes. But the oil lobby is still doing a fair job of getting at least some of the blame diverted from their clients.

It's also interesting to see Entergy New Orleans named in the city's lawsuit. We already know relations with the utility are under some strain as of late. We're not sure what this might mean for the future.  But it's prompted some closer scrutiny of the current regulatory structure including the lawyers and consulting firms who benefit from it.  There is a can't miss article up at the Lens this week that dives into all of that.