With flood risk increasing and flood insurance rates likely following suit, it seems like there’s got to be a better way to tackle the challenge.
For example: could we make our homes float when the water comes?
This week we talk to an architect who has devoted her professional life to that question, and we visit a Louisiana community where some people have decided that it makes more sense to temporarily float a house than to elevate it on stilts.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
—
Want to help shape the future of Life Raft? We’re looking for feedback on our first season. Filling out this (super short) survey will really help us understand how we can best serve you. If you include your contact info, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a prize from WWNO or WRKF. .
While we figure out what the future holds, we’d love to extend the biggest and warmest thank you to everyone who made this possible. Thanks, especially, to everyone for listening, and for submitting the questions that made this show possible.
In the meantime, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
—
Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you.
Everyone knows flood insurance isn’t the most exciting topic. What this episode presupposes is: maybe it should be?
It’s not difficult to imagine a future in which climate-change-fueled storms and floods depopulate our coastal communities. Generations of Louisianans have been moving northward for decades, after all.
But could the rising cost of flood insurance actually drive people away sooner? That’s the question we’re exploring this week. We talk to two experts who explain the history of flood insurance in the United States, where the program is headed, and why flood insurance affordability is a political problem.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
Rebecca Elliott is an assistant professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book is called Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States.
Andy Horowitz is an assistant professor of history at Tulane University. His book is called Katrina: A History, 1915-2015.
Do you have a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
Follow us on social media for bonus pictures and occasional memes. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you.
If you like what you hear from Life Raft, consider making a donation toWRKFandWWNOto help keep the show going!
Gov. John Bel Edwards wants Louisiana to dramatically cut its emissions by 2050. What would it take to get there?
This week on Life Raft, reporter Tegan Wendland breaks it down for us. We talk about where Louisiana’s emissions come from, what changes need to be made to reduce them and the hurdles standing in the way, and do a little imagining about what New Orleans might look like in 2050.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
Do you have a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you.
If you like what you hear from Life Raft, consider making a donation toWRKFandWWNOto help keep the show going!
The 2020 Hurricane Season was intense. It set all kinds of records: most named storms in a season,and most to rapidly intensify, among others. Five storms hit the Louisiana coast.
How much of this can we chalk up to climate change, and how much has to do with normal weather patterns? What’s the link between hurricanes and climate change?
This week on Life Raft we revisit interviews with people who survived Hurricane Laura this summer, take a road trip across Louisiana, and learn the latest science about climate change and hurricanes.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
Do you have a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you.
If you like what you hear from Life Raft, consider making a donation toWRKFandWWNOto help keep the show going!
We’re busy readying the second half of the Life Raft season, but we still wanted you to feast your ears on some climate content, so here’s a story for you.
It’s all about our attachment to place in the face of climate change — our connection to the land, our ways of life, and how we emotionally process what it means for those places to be threatened by climate change.
This story was originally produced by Davis Land for Houston Public Media. Davis is currently a senior producer for Slate’s daily news podcast, What Next.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
Got a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re onInstagram,Facebook, andTwitter.
Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and local listeners.
Doomsday prepping seems more and more logical to us on the Life Raft team. Climate change-induced weather disasters are only getting worse, and it never hurts to be prepared, right?
Today on the show we’re going to get a glimpse into the world of prepping through the eyes of Sharon Ross, who wanted to be prepared for anything, but later found herself the odd one out.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
This story comes to us from our friends at Wyoming Public Media. It’s from a terrific podcast called HumaNature, which tells stories about human experiences in nature.
You can read more about Sharon Ross and her efforts here, and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
It’s been a big year for the environment, what with the 2020 hurricane season and the wildfires and everything else. We wanted to put together a little playlist of climate-related podcasts that you can chip away at over the holidays.
We’ve tried to include a little bit of everything: a breakdown of this year’s record-breaking hurricane season, a historical look at America’s relationship with litter, and — because ‘tis the season — how to talk to your family about climate change. And, as they used to say on TV, that’s not all.
Listen to them all or pick and choose your favorites. To cut down on all the clicking I made a handy Spotify playlist with all of these episodes. Enjoy!
— Travis Lux, coastal reporter and Life Raft co-host
Climate Change And 2020’s Record-Breaking Hurricane Season (Short Wave)
Let’s get this out of the way first: what the heck was up with this year’s hurricane season? It broke all kinds of records: number of named storms, number of storms that made landfall, number of storms that rapidly intensified, and so on. So how much of this can we blame on climate change?
This episode of NPR’s daily science podcast Short Wave tries to answer these questions and more, putting 2020’s hurricane season in a little context.
Bonus: New Orleans Public Radio has also reported on this. The Coastal Desk’s Tegan Wendland wrote an autopsy of the 2020 hurricane season, trying to parse out the influence of climate change.
Premium Elevation (There Goes The Neighborhood)
Gentrification is changing neighborhoods across the country — from bustling big cities to scenic small towns. In Miami’s Little Haiti, which sits on higher ground than much of the rest of the city, climate change is one of the contributing factors.
This episode is the first of a terrific three-part series that takes a look at “climate gentrification.” It’s produced by WNYC Studios’ There Goes The Neighborhood and WLRN, Miami’s public radio station.
So You’ve Got Climate Anxiety. Here’s What You Can Do With It. (Life Raft)
Oof. Two heavy episodes in a row. It’s time to step back and take control of that simmering anxiety. In this episode of Life Raft, New Orleans Public Radio spoke with science writer Britt Wray about the overlap of climate change and mental health. She tells the story of her own climate anxiety, defines some terms, and importantly, offers some tips for how to deal with it.
The Afrovivalist (HumaNature)
You could also handle your climate anxiety by diving deep into the world of doomsday prepping. In this episode of HumaNature from Wyoming Public Radio, we hear the story of a Black woman in Oregon who joined the prepper movement only to find herself quite different from the rest.
The Litter Myth (Throughline)
But hold on now — how much responsibility do individuals really have in cleaning up the mess of climate change? This episode of NPR’s history podcast Throughline takes a look at how one organization changed America’s relationship with trash, and asks who should be responsible for it.
Plan “B” (Outside/In)
We know that we need to reduce our emissions dramatically in order to get a handle on climate change. But what about in the meantime? This episode of Outside/In from New Hampshire Public Radio takes a look at the controversial topic of geoengineering — the idea that altering the Earth’s atmosphere could be part of the puzzle.
Trying to Talk to Family about Climate Change? Here’s How (How To Save A Planet)
Let’s say you’re going to be around family this holiday season and are thinking about bringing up climate change with a skeptical family member. How to go about it? This episode of Gimlet Media’s How To Save A Planet shares a bunch of tips and tricks, and tells the story of a father and son who had a successful go of it.
When it rains, it pours. And when it pours, it floods.
More and more, that appears to be the situation down South. In New Orleans, several big rain storms in recent years have turned streets into rivers and flooded homes and cars.
This week on Life Raft: flooding. What can we do about it?
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
We speak drop by a bar that regularly floods, get the latest science on climate-induced rainfall, and visit with a New Orleanian who decided to get her hands dirty and take some action.
Here are some great resources for how to help reduce flooding in your neighborhood:
This workbook from WaterWise Gulf South is a great how-to guide for getting started on your own green infrastructure.
The Urban Conservancy has a program that reimburses New Orleanians for ripping up concrete in their yards.
Healthy Community Services (run by Angela Chalk, who you heard in Episode 1) also does lots of work around green infrastructure in New Orleans.
P.S. Here’s the legendary photo of “Darryl.”
Got a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
No matter where you fall on the eco-anxiety spectrum, on a scale from low-key stressed to lying up at night in a dread spiral, you could probably use some advice on doing something about it. Climate change can be scary, after all.
We talk with science writer Britt Wray, who has been researching the overlap of mental health and climate change. She defines some terms, offers some tips and tricks, and shares her personal experience with feelings of climate dread. Plus, she tells a fun story of that time she gave a presentation on climate denial and eco-stress to a bunch of energy executives.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
Here are some great resources for digging deeper on climate change feelings:
Gen Dread (Britt Wray’s newsletter)
Good Grief Network (here’s the Facebook link)
Climate Psychology Alliance (North America)
Climate Psychology Alliance (UK)
Climate Psychiatry Alliance (US)
Psychology for a Safe Climate (Australia)
Got a question you want us to explore? Send it to us!
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50) –Life Raft
What did you think about the first season of Life Raft? We want to know how to tweak the show to better serve you because you are who we make this show for. Here’s how you can help us: fill out this super short online survey. It takes less than five minutes and will go a long way toward helping us improve the show in the future. As an incentive: if you complete the survey by March 29, 2021, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a $50 gift card (two winners will be chosen at random). Free money, y’all! That’s how much we want to know what you think. — Support for WWNO’s Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and listeners like you. If you liked what you heard from Life Raft this season, consider making a donation to WRKF and WWNO to help keep the show going.
Tell Us What You Think About Life Raft (And Win $50)
What If We Just…Made Our Houses Float?
Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?
What Would It Take For Louisiana To Go Carbon Neutral By 2050?
How Much Can We Blame The 2020 Hurricane Season On Climate Change?
This week on Life Raft, we take a dive into the world of food. We drop by a famous New Orleans oyster bar, and visit with an oyster scientist to get a better feel for the ways a changing climate threatens oysters and what’s being done to help ’em out.
Got a question you want us to explore? Send it to us.
For bonus pictures and extra fun vibes, follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
