Sunk Costs, Sunken City: the Story of New Orleans with Richard Campanella

Cities and states along the I-10 are having to consider many existential questions as the climate warms. Looking to the future, the question is whether these communities can adequately respond and adapt to intensifying storm patterns, rising sea levels and extreme drought.

It’s a radical shift in thought, given that earlier centuries of American settlement were primarily focused on developing technologies to bend nature to our will. The century that unfolds before us now suggests these roles may ultimately become reversed.

It is hard to find a more compelling historic example of this high wire walk between man and nature than in the story of New Orleans, a city built upon particularly unforgivable lands. In this latest episode, Ten Across founder Duke Reiter speaks with Richard Campanella, author of Draining New Orleans: the 300 Year Quest to Dewater the Crescent City (2023) to understand the series of engineering decisions that created the city as we know it today — dangerously seated below a rising ocean and in the eye of intensifying tropical storms.