KEY TAKEAWAYS: Scientists say a controversial Tulane study should inspire action, not hopelessness, over Louisiana’s coastal future. The research warns climate-driven migration from coastal Louisiana could occur within decades without long-term planning. Experts argue coastal restoration pro jects can buy time while communities adapt and preserve Louisiana’s culture. The study has sparked debate among scientists, state officials and local leaders over the future of coastal restoration efforts.   Coastal restoration leaders, political pundits and everyday people in Louisiana are seething after a recent study said New Orleans and other coastal communities in the state have reached a “point of no return” against climate change. But the scientists who live and work on Louisiana’s coast say that, while the science of rising seas is accurate and urgent, the study should act as a call to action rather than cause people to lose hope. The study from Tulane University, led by coastal geoscientist Torbjörn Törnqvist, looked at a wide body of research from others in his field as well as geologists, anthropologists and sociologists. His work sought to detail not just the extent of Louisiana’s coastal land loss but also how it could affect the migration of people living in proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. Published in the academic journal Nature Sustainability, Törnqvist concluded that migration out of the immediate coastal Louisiana region — including New Orleans — would likely happen within a matter of decades, whether or not it was planned. His study suggested officials start planning a retreat from the sinking coast while trying to preserve the strong cultural identity that makes South Louisiana so unique. Törnqvist emphasized how “planned, incremental steps” could help avoid the population on the coast from scattering in a way that traps low-income families in a cycle of harm and severs the cultural connections along Louisiana’s coast. Many in the impacted areas have balked at the idea. New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno called it “shortsighted and foolish,” saying it underestimated the cultural importance and resilience of the city in a letter published in The Times-Picayune. Gordy Dove, head of the state’s coastal restoration agency, pushed back on Törnqvist’s study in a commentary submitted to news outlets in May. Dove has long criticized large-scale sediment diversions to rebuild the coast as too experimental, costly and disruptive to local communities. Land bridges and smaller-scope marsh creation projects are better investments of coastal restoration dollars, he said. But coastal scientists, some Louisianians in their own right who work on restoration efforts, say people are reaching the wrong conclusions from Törnqvist’s study. They say his findings aren’t a reason to lose hope, pack up and leave the state — or to abandon coastal restoration efforts. Instead, they want the public to direct that passion toward solutions rather than hiding from science. They say it’s possible to hold both the knowledge that the coast is in crisis and that there’s time to save meaningful parts of Louisiana’s land and culture for future generations. “The science of ice melt and sea-level rise is not controversial, and it’s going to happen,” said Sam Bentley, a coastal scientist at Louisiana State University. ‘People have been voting with their feet’ Törnqvist’s study looked at population loss along the Louisiana coast in recent decades, showing a steady trend of people leaving the coast with large diasporas after big hurricanes. The study cites how hurricanes, such as Katrina and Rita in 2005, destroyed housing and infrastructure in addition to accelerating land loss. People were forced out, uprooting Louisiana’s culture in the process. Bentley was one of the scientists who reviewed Törnqvist’s research before it was published. As a Louisiana resident for more than 30 years, he said the stakes of the issue were accurately captured in the study, despite what political figures argue and how painful some residents find it to acknowledge. “People have been voting with their feet. They’ve been voting with moving vans. They’ve been moving away from the coast for decades, and everybody knows it,” he said. “It’s old news, and it’s painful, but it’s been happening, and there’s been a lot of change already because of that.” Törnqvist documented the declining populations of coastal parishes over the past 25 years as evidence that, in some capacity, climate migration along Louisiana’s coast has already begun. U.S. census data show the change over time, catalyzed especially by hurricanes. Cameron Parish lost 52% of its population from 2000 to 2025, going from 9,937 to 4,718 residents. The largest population losses happened in 2006, after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September 2005, respectively, and again after 2020 when hurricanes Laura and Delta hit the Southwest Louisiana coast. New Orleans has seen its population decrease 25% from 2000 to 2025, or around 123,000 people. The largest loss came after Hurricane Katrina displaced 52% of the city’s residents. Its population peaked in 2018 at around 392,000, and current estimates place New Orleans’ population around 360,000. The increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes brought on by climate change is a key factor in an accelerating movement away from the more vulnerable areas of the coast, according to the Törnqvist’s analysis of wider research. His study noted that rising insurance costs will likely be another factor that makes it harder for people to stay on the coast. Bentley said what most people fail to take away from the study’s findings is the variable of time. “You can imagine that you’ve got a bag of ice on your kitchen counter sitting in a bowl,” Bentley said. “If the room stays cool, it’s going to melt at one rate, and if you turn the thermostat up, it’s going to melt at another rate. But the ultimate melting volume is the same.” Engineers and coastal scientists can put “speed bumps” along the way to mitigate land loss to extend the timeline for people living in coastal areas, according to Bentley. But the need for understanding how to preserve what matters is urgent. “Because this change will happen over multiple generations, we have time to adapt. We have time to adapt in terms of both social change and also developing more effective coastal protections,” he said. “If everybody who lives south of I-10 ends up leaving Louisiana and moving to Texas and Arkansas and wherever, then it’s going to be devastating for Louisiana,” Bentley said. “But if we can figure out a way to have a planned retreat for the coastline and preserve community networks, keep people in place and have more of a renaissance than a catastrophic retreat, that would be beautiful.” ‘We’re not making minor choices anymore’ In response to the backlash from his study, Törnqvist wrote a commentary in The Times-Picayune with a very similar statement to Bentley’s: There’s a need for planned, generational retreat from the coast as well as continued focus on coastal restoration, “buying time” for future generations to remain connected to Louisiana’s identity while responding to land loss. Other coastal experts echo that sentiment. There is the inevitability of extreme change from sea-level rise and the loss of Louisiana’s coast, but there isn’t a set outcome for how people can adapt, they said. “I think there’s a lot of truth in this study when it comes to talking about the difficulties with migration and who that’s going to impact and how hard that’s going to be on certain populations,” said Alisha Renfro, a coastal scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “That’s certainly the case, but I think there’s also a lot of hope that we can walk away with, that we can actually influence our future.” Through Dove’s agency, the Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority, Louisiana has implemented a coastal master plan of projects aimed at restoring lost areas of the coast and fortifying protections against increasingly intense storms and rising seas. The plan includes hundreds of projects, such as land bridges, small-scale sediment diversions and levee systems aimed at fortifying the coast. Renfro said these efforts shouldn’t go unnoticed, and the Tulane paper calls attention to the need for the public to continue to throw support behind the efforts. “The purpose is to stimulate discussion about what the long-term planning and adaptation should be,” said Ehab Meselhe, a hydrologic engineer and chair of Tulane University’s Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering. Meselhe’s work has been instrumental for a variety of Louisiana coastal restoration projects, such as the modeling of Louisiana’s 2012 and 2017 coastal master plans and the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, a large-scale project Dove canceled with support from Gov. Jeff Landry, who appointed Dove as CPRA chairman. The uproar following Törnqvist’s study from people living along the coast is, in large part, the goal of talking about the stakes of the loss, Meselhe said. People should know just how urgent it is and take action. “That’s exactly where the mindset of the general public should be. The agencies, the academic institutions, the practitioners — what are they doing to protect and restore our environment in South Louisiana?” Meselhe said. “The future will highly depend on decisions that we make collectively as government agencies, scientists, engineers and as residents,” he added. Louisiana leaders’ decision to end large-scale sediment diversions for Barataria Bay and Breton Sound was a blow to the influence people have over slowing the rate of land loss on the coast, Renfro said. Törnqvist’s study shows why the public should be engaged and call attention to these decisions and their effects on actionable ways to diminish the rate of land loss, she said. “We’re not making minor choices anymore,” said Refro. “We’re at a crossroads where we either deal with whatever we’re handed at this point, or we actually take charge of our own future.” Dove has defended the decision to cancel the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, a key component to Törnqvist’s conclusion that relocation of people along the Louisiana coast is inevitable. In an interview about the study, Dove declared that New Orleans would “never go underwater.” “There’s too many people wanting to get a headline by saying we’re not winning the battle,” Dove said. “We are winning coastal restoration, and we will win it.” ...read more read less