A few hundred yards from the shoreline where the Gulf of Mexico meets the small town of Cameron in southwestern Louisiana, my feet crunch on four-year-old wreckage.
I stand in the dilapidated pews of a Baptist church, on broken glass and wood strewn across the floor, staring at the partially collapsed roof. Debris from the series of hurricanes that hit the area in 2020 still dots here and much of Cameron. Residents have long referred to this remote part of the United States as “the end of the world,” but that adage now feels more prescient than ever. Since the storm, the population has dropped from nearly 2,000 to a few hundred. Empty foundations mark the locations of many homes washed away by the storm surge. And a huge gas export terminal looms over the horizon.
Down the street, I met Lerlene Rodrig, who had heard my footsteps and came looking for me. She lives in a mobile home next to her partially destroyed family home, which is still being rebuilt, facing the direction of a nearby cemetery. She told how the storm surge from Hurricane Laura caused her father’s buried coffin to “float up.” It was missing for years, but was rediscovered just a few months ago. Now, it is finally “returning to the earth.”
“We’re back,” she says of Laura’s aftermath. “But if it happens again, I’m not. I’m done.”
The wetlands and coastal communities of Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District will not determine the outcome of this election. But these regions are more at risk than most places in the country. We are on the front lines of frequent extreme weather events. The rapid expansion of the oil and gas industry is increasing pollution. And they are under threat of destruction due to alarming sea level rise. But even as voting day rapidly approaches, you’ll hear little about life in these areas in widespread conversations. So Donald Trump is certain to win here, and Democrats have been absent for decades.
But it wasn’t until 2016, after President Trump’s unexpected victory in the country, that America’s coastal elites turned to writing about the region to explain what had happened. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild explored the popularity of the Tea Party movement in this part of the state in Strangers in Their Own Land, coining the term “The Great Paradox.” In Hochschild’s view, the idea is that the voters most in need of federal aid and regulation (like those in climate-ravaged Louisiana) are desperate to dismantle such government oversight completely. He said he is speculating how he could support the Republican Party, which is working on the issue.
Rodrigue told me he accepts climate science (which President Trump calls a hoax) and opposes blight and pollution from building more gas terminals (surely if Trump wins next month). Still, she recalled how the previous president imposed seafood tariffs on China, arguing that they were essential to sustaining the dwindling shrimping communities that she and her family have been a part of for generations. , will still vote for the president.
FFurther inland, I visited Republican women in southwestern Louisiana at a luxurious country club on a lake surrounded by chemical plants spewing pollutants into the sky. Hochschild, who also spent time with this group, discovered a complex grid of demographic changes, unbalanced economies, religious dogma, and race-based resentment that explains her great contradictions. Many of them are on display here today, and more seem to be here to stay.
Many of the women in attendance have also made great sacrifices due to extreme weather. I asked one of the participants who lost her home during Lola whether she considered herself a victim of the climate crisis. She shook her head. “I believe that God Almighty has the say in what happens to the climate,” she says.
The keynote speech was delivered by Tim Temple, Louisiana’s Republican insurance commissioner, as the state faces an insurance crisis caused by frequent major hurricanes. Many residents here are unhappy that interest rates have doubled in the past year. But Temple gave a mediocre speech and never mentioned the climate crisis. Instead, he blames it all on overregulation. In subsequent interviews with me, he repeatedly refused to acknowledge climate science.
It’s a reminder of the catastrophic failures of the state’s conservative leaders, some of whom echo President Trump’s words regarding climate change misinformation, such as far-right Gov. Jeff Landry. It also warns of the harsh reality that a second term for Trump will bring, given his shameless promotion of falsehoods and conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen this month, and that other It is likely to affect those who voted for Trump as much as anyone else.
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Perhaps a lesser-known failure of the Democratic Party in Louisiana is that the party capitulated miserably in the last election, effectively handing control of the state to the far right.
But just a few miles from the country club, new signs of resistance are beginning to take shape. I met Sadie Summerlin, an abortion rights activist who decided to run for Congress here against incumbent extremist and climate science denier Clay Higgins. Higgins recently suggested that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in President Joe Biden’s administration be arrested and sent to prison for trying to control toxic emissions in the state.
It’s clearly an uphill battle, but Summerlin strongly disagrees with the idea that progressive politics can’t be promoted in a predominantly conservative community. With Summerlin’s family acting as campaign advisers, we roamed the streets of a low-income Lake Charles neighborhood in sweltering humidity. She listens intently as residents talk about their struggles to recover from the storm.
“We weren’t there,” she admitted. “We haven’t had a voice. We’ve let the Republicans decide what we should and shouldn’t say.”
She says her campaign is about starting a conversation, not necessarily winning. Her honesty is refreshing. You can’t start a conversation right away.
Oliver Laughland is the Guardian’s Southern Bureau Chief
