December 18, 2015

Louisiana’s disappearing coast: The bad news just got worse

This is a map from a study released just this month by Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), and produced jointly by the Rand Corporation and Louisiana State University. It’s a map of how Louisiana’s coast will look in 50 years without any coastal restoration: Red…

November 3, 2015

What did ExxonMobil executives know about climate change and when did they know it?

Two US Congressmen and three presidential candidates have called for a federal investigation into ExxonMobil since the recent release of what some have suggested are “smoking gun” documents regarding the company’s knowledge and actions concerning climate change. In July, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published…

October 13, 2015

The next 100 years at Xavier University

This month in The Firm Line, I’d like to focus on some recent developments at New Orleans’ own Xavier University that I consider a huge win both for Xavier and for our city. Xavier is one of America’s 107 Historically Black Universities and Colleges, and it has…

September 22, 2015

Bees are dying, and it’s going to hurt all of us (starting with our pocketbooks)

How big is the problem? Bees are dying, whole hives of them, by the millions. These mass die-offs have been happening since about 2006. During the 12-month period ending in April, 2015, beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies. The normal rate of yearly loss is only 10-15 percent.