SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
new orleans
In a Race Between Trump, Climate Chaos, and the Green Tech Build-Out, Who Will Win?
The way to avoid the evacuation of New Orleans—or a thousand follow-on horrors—is to move with desperate urgency to rebuild our energy system.
May 09, 2026
Our world seems to me to be moving very very fast these days—often that’s because of the feral energy of the Trump White House, feverishly trying to do the wrong thing on as many fronts as possible. In the last few cycles have come the news that that the White House is evicting bison herds from federal lands in Montana (a favor to ranchers, an insult to tribal leaders), approving fruit-flavored vapes (a favor to the big-donor vapor lobby, an insult to public health), and insisting that the Pope wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon (an insult to Catholics, a favor to his easily bruised ego). If the strategy is designed to wear us down, it’s definitely working on me.
But something else is moving fast too, and far more productively—that’s the ascension of new technologies. I don’t mean AI, which so far has had little impact on me and a generally dispiriting one on my fellow Americans, to judge from the polling; I mean the surging changes in clean tech, which are rewriting what’s possible in the course of months, even days.
Consider, for instance, the news from California. As I’ve noted before, the Golden State is suddenly supplying huge amounts of night-time energy from big grid-based batteries; basically, at night its running on stored sunshine. But the reporter Claire Barber, in an interview with grid expert Ed Smeloff, put a number on this Wednesday: California’s new batteries, installed over the last 36 months or so, are the equivalent of a dozen new nuclear power plants. If California had installed a dozen nukes in a couple of years, you’d know about it—indeed, the fate of its single reactor, at Diablo Canyon, has inspired thousands of articles, documentaries, protests, and counterprotests over the same stretch of time. But batteries are… metal boxes that pose no great threat. They just… work. Smeloff:
The most remarkable change in the California energy market has been the very rapid addition of grid-connected batteries and the use of those batteries to provide peak demand capacity. California is transitioning fairly quickly from using primarily natural gas resources to now using batteries. The batteries are [used] during the peak period, which is in the evening, typically around seven o’clock, producing as much as 40% of the peak capacity requirements. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement in a short period of time.
Bottom line, from Stanford’s Mark Jacobson on Tuesday: California using 61% less natural gas this year to generate electricity than it did three years ago.
There’s also the sudden advent of a slightly smaller class of batteries, ones that as Elizabeth Ouzts observes are:
designed to fill specific community needs and—due to their size—relatively quick and low-cost to build.
The Blue Ridge Power Agency, which serves a string of nonprofit utilities in central and western Virginia, is set to go live this summer with a collection of five batteries of about 5 megawatts each. The systems will help two rural electric co-ops and the city of Salem’s utility save money by storing power when it is cheap and abundant. They can then rely on that saved-up power when high demand on the grid spikes prices.
All in all, the projects are predicted to save the member utilities $100 million over the batteries’ 20-year lifespan, addressing long-held local concerns over rising costs.
And now move down one more order of magnitude, and consider the report, out Thursday morning, from the Rewiring America think tank, about how solar, battery, and heat pump technology have advanced so quickly that a few policy shifts could allow the electrification of almost every home in America, turning them into useful and affordable parts of a national energy infrastructure. (Good coverage from Catherine Boudreau here). Consider, say, what we could require of data centers. If some must be built, then force them to supply their own electricity—by buying heat pumps and solar panels for surrounding homes. It’s cheaper than building new supplies, and much much faster:
Hyperscalers are driving more than $100 billion per year into energy generation and infrastructure investment. Directing even a portion of that spending toward distributed energy resources could mobilize tens of billions of dollars for household energy upgrades. Hyperscaler investment in home energy upgrades would make such upgrades affordable for an additional 19 million households (increasing affordability from 30-58% of eligible households)—unlocking average lifetime savings of $9,400 per household.
Again—all this stuff is available right now. There are plenty of heat pumps and batteries; if Google wants a data center, it should be handing them out to the neighbors. And once they have, then all these homes can be easily knit together into virtual power plants (VPPs); as a new report from the good people at Pew points out:
Fully leveraging these existing and future Distributed Energy Resources through VPPs, including providing appropriate compensation for DER owners, could deliver power during peak demand at 40%-60% of the cost of traditional solutions.
And if you’re thinking—"Yeah, but policy changes come too slowly to matter in a polarized America," well, your cynicism is justified. But not entirely. The last few weeks have seen something remarkable, with legislative action happening at a speed I can’t quite recall. Everyone who participated in Sun Day last fall (and that’s many of you) helped launch a nationwide campaign for, among other things, balcony or plug-in solar. And that’s already bearing fruit: Just eight months later it’s passed legislatures in Virginia, Maine, Colorado, and Maryland. It’s through the Senate and the House in New Hampshire, and the Senate in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, through the House (and late last night the Senate) in Connecticut and through committee in Massachusetts (in the latter two, its part of important larger omnibus solar bills). It’s also before committees in California, Illinois, and DC. This is a reminder that activism can (and must) move as fast as technology—before the spring is out, and despite serious opposition from utilities, we’ll have enough states to establish a firm American market for a technology that has swept through Europe in recent years. (Here’s a great account from my colleagues at Third Act Upstate NY on the kind of organizing that is producing these wins).
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel alternatives are… slow to appear. Dan Gearino has an excellent account of plans for a truly massive gas-fired power plant in Ohio, announced in March by the always classy Howard Lutnick as AC/DC’s Back in Black blared from the speakers. “We’re operating in Trump time,” he told the crowd ahead of the ceremonial groundbreaking. But Trump time sometimes means fantasy time:
“The whole thing doesn’t add up,” said Ric O’Connell, executive director of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides technical expertise on the electricity grid to policymakers and advocates.
O’Connell thinks the power plant’s high costs will make the project difficult to justify outside of a moment in which the Trump administration is seeking attention for big projects. Due to inflation on key components, the project would cost $3,586 per kilowatt, two to three times the cost of a combined-cycle gas plant two years ago.
“They’re just smiling and waving for the cameras, and then, as soon as Trump’s out of power, the [power plant is] going to get scaled way down or killed,” O’Connell said.
The clean energy build-out, of course, can’t come fast enough, because the climate crisis is pushing on inexorably. April saw the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide average 431 parts per million for the first time at the monitoring station in Mauna Loa (but don’t worry—Trump’s new budget zeroes out funding for the facility). A new report put a very human face on those statistics: As Oliver Milman reports, it found that the time may be coming to start thinking of the painful necessity to move people out of New Orleans, because climate change is in danger of putting it past a "point of no return":
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.
This scenario makes the region the “most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world”, the researchers state, and requires immediate action to prepare a smooth transition for people away from New Orleans, which has a population of about 360,000 people, to safer ground.
The way to avoid this—or a thousand follow-on horrors—is to move with desperate urgency to rebuild our energy system. That won’t end global warming—too late for that. But not too late to shave tenths of a degree off how hot the planet gets, and every tenth of a degree we raise the temperature moves a hundred million souls from a safe climate zone to a perilous one. Maybe New Orleans is in that next increment. Maybe your house. Someone’s house, that’s for sure. So speed, speed, speed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Evacuation Must Start Now as Climate-Driven Rising Gulf Slowly Drowns New Orleans: Study
"Coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return," says new research.
May 04, 2026
A study published Monday warns that New Orleans must immediately begin planning and gradually implementing its permanent evacuation to avert a dangerously rushed exodus later, because it has passed a "point of no return" as climate-driven sea-level rise slowly swallows the storied city.
"With global temperatures poised to exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold—a level that triggered substantial ice sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial—low-elevation coastal zones face sea-level commitments far beyond current planning horizons," says the study, which was published by the journal Nature Sustainability.
"With this geological frame of reference, we examine the impact of sea-level rise on what may be the most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world using prehistoric and contemporary patterns of human mobility," the publication continues. "We highlight the positive aspects of the recently commenced out-migration in this region and argue that the fate of communities landwards of this coastal zone will be decided in the next few decades."
"While climate mitigation should remain the first step to prevent the worst outcomes, coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return,” the paper adds.
That's because rising waters are slowly eroding Louisiana's coast, including New Orleans, which “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century," according to the study's authors.
“Louisiana is a canary in the coal mine. It is one of the rare places where we’re already clearly seeing climate-motivated depopulation combined with other social and economic factors,” said Yale School of the Environment professor and study co-author Brianna Castro.
The authors argued that by acknowledging the inevitability of New Orleans' underwater future, government and residents can avert a fraught rushed retreat by planning and executing a managed multigenerational relocation and set an example for other threatened coastal communities.
According to one widely cited study published a decade ago, around 13 million Americans living in coastal areas could be forced to relocate to higher ground by the end of the century due climate-driven sea-level rise, with the Gulf Coast and Florida expected lose the most livable land. Globally, hundreds of millions of people are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to rising seas.
After Hurricane Katrina—which inundated the city and killed nearly 1,000 people in the New Orleans metro area—billions of dollars were spent fortifying the city's levee system, which failed catastrophically during the 2005 storm. However, experts warn that in the long term, levees won't be able to stop the rising waters any longer.
That's why the study's authors said officials must begin the city's orderly depopulation as soon as possible.
"What kind of retreat do you want?" asked Castro. "Do you want to incentivize it and then people go naturally for jobs, housing, and lifestyle amenities—or do you want people to wait and then have to leave abruptly in crisis?”
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘Political Stunt Wrapped in Badges’: New Orleans Readies Resistance as Trump Operation Begins
“Our city is not a stage for political theater," said the Democratic congressman representing New Orleans. "Our people are not props."
Dec 03, 2025
The Trump administration on Wednesday launched a major operation against what it said are "criminal illegal aliens" in New Orleans but that critics contend is political theater targeting what the Louisiana city's mayor-elect called people “just trying to survive and do the right thing."
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it launched Operation Catahoula Crunch—which some Trump administration officials are also calling "Swamp Sweep"—because New Orleans is a sanctuary city that refuses to cooperate with the anti-immigrant crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump.
The blitz—which began on the same day as a similar operation in Minneapolis and follows federal invasions of cities including Charlotte; Chicago; Los Angeles; Memphis; Portland, Oregon; and Washington, DC—is expected to involve at least hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops and reportedly aims for 5,000 arrests in Louisiana and Mississippi.
"Sanctuary policies endanger American communities by releasing illegal criminal aliens and forcing DHS law enforcement to risk their lives to remove criminal illegal aliens that should have never been put back on the streets," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Wednesday.
While McClaughlin claimed the targets of the operation will be "monsters" that "include violent criminals who were released after arrest for home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto, and rape," examination of detention statistics of similar operations in other communities has shown that a large percentage of those swept up have no criminal record.
Academic studies and analyses by both left- and right-wing groups and have repeatedly affirmed that undocumented immigrants commit crime at a dramatically lower rate than native-born US citizens. The libertarian Cato Institute last week published data showing that nearly three-quarters of the 44,882 people booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since October had no criminal conviction and just 5% had been convicted of violent crimes.
Detention data published last month by the Department of Justice revealed that just 16 out of 614 people arrested in the Chicago area during DHS's Operation Midway Blitz had criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”
Elected officials representing New Orleans called the DHS operation an unnecessary and unwelcome stunt.
“It’s one thing if you would have a real strategic approach on going after people... who have criminal felonies or are being accused of some very serious and violent crimes. But that’s not what the public is seeing,” Democratic New Orleans Mayor-elect Helena Morena told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
“They’re seeing people who are just trying to survive and do the right thing—and many of them now have American children who are not causing problems in our community—treated like they are violent, violent criminals," she added.
Moreno's website published a "know your rights" resource page with tips from the National Immigrant Justice Center—a move that could possibly run afoul of a state law cited by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill to threaten felony prosecution of people who nonviolently resist Trump's crackdown. On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the law is a violation of the right to free speech.
Congressman Troy Carter (D-La.) said in a statement Tuesday that “if the administration truly wants to support public safety in New Orleans, they can help us recruit and retain well-trained local officers, invest in modern policing tools, and build transparent partnerships with city and parish leaders."
New Orleans welcomes partnership. We do not welcome occupation.What we are seeing unfold in our community is not public safety; it is a political stunt wrapped in badges, armored vehicles, and military uniforms.
[image or embed]
— Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr. (@reptroycarter.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 6:35 AM
"Dropping armed federal agents and National Guard troops into our communities without coordination is not cooperation—it is chaos," Carter continued. “As Congressman for New Orleans, I want to be clear: We will always stand for the rule of law. We will always stand for safe communities. And we will always stand against tactics that terrorize families and undermine public trust."
“Our city is not a stage for political theater," he added. "Our people are not props. If the administration wants to be a partner, then act like one; share the plan, respect local law, and work with us, not around us.”
Hundreds of New Orleans residents took to the streets Monday night despite cold, heavy rain to protest the impending DHS operation. Demonstrators shared umbrellas and held signs showing support for immigrants. They chanted messages, including "No ICE! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!" and "Chinga la Migra"—roughly translated as "Fuck the Border Patrol."
“We have to fight for the rights of everyone. I’m out here to support the immigrant community because it’s an integral part of New Orleans. New Orleans was built by immigrants," protester Jamie Segura told Gambit.
Addressing the crowd at Monday's rally, resident Mitch Gonzalez said: “This is my home. My trans sister was kidnapped and taken from me. Now she has to fight from Mexico, not even her home country, because they’re snatching people.”
Last night, hundreds marched through the streets of New Orleans, in the pouring rain, chanting “No ICE.”
If people are willing to storm the streets after dark in a downpour, it tells you everything about how fed up this country is with state-sanctioned cruelty. pic.twitter.com/kF5KjpU2SX
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) December 2, 2025
As New Orleans residents anticipated the impending operation, mutual aid groups kicked into action in defense of immigrant communities, citing effective rapid response efforts in Chicago.
“What we’ve learned is that even a street witness who is not recording makes these interactions less traumatic and less violent,” Beth Davis, press liaison officer at Indivisible NOLA, told the Washington Post on Wednesday. “So we need to get eyes on these people.”
The New Orleans branch of Democratic Socialists of America—which is hosting training sessions—said ahead of the federal blitz: "We call upon all of New Orleans to get organized and resist this fascist occupation. Protect your neighbors and make these troops and federal agents feel unwelcome in every part of our city."
Other Orleanians prepared by closing or displaying signs telling the federal invaders that they are not welcome.
“We’re going to make sure that any hotel that they stay at, any neighborhood that they try to terrorize, we’re going to bring as many people there to stop them in their tracks, whether it’s in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Chicago—anywhere in this country,” Antonia Mar of Freedom Road Socialist Organization told Verite News during Monday's protest.
Suggesting that the crackdown could backfire, Mar added that "if there’s one thing Trump does well, he gets people organized against him."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular