Join Us for an Important Public Debate.
About this Event
On August 29, this city marks twenty-one years since Katrina. We usually spend this week looking backward. This year we're going to spend an evening looking the other way.
This past May, a Tulane team led by geologist Torbjörn Törnqvist published a study in Nature Sustainability with a conclusion that landed hard: New Orleans is not forever. The research found that coastal Louisiana is taking on water roughly three times faster than the global average -- the land is sinking while the Gulf rises -- and that the wetlands buffering the city passed their survival threshold about twenty years ago. Three quarters of what's left of them could be gone by 2070. The paper's authors don't say run. They say plan, and they say the decisions that matter get made in the next thirty years.
Not everyone accepted it. The chairman of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority called it "the most ridiculous study I have ever seen" and pointed to levees averaging seventeen feet. Mayor Moreno wrote that it leans on speculative long-range projections, and reminded people that we heard this same talk after Katrina -- and came back stronger.
So: is our resilience actually denial? Or is it the only reason we're still here?
The format. Eat. Drink. Think…then Talk Smart to Me is a conversation, not a lecture and not a panel. You'll sit with people you don't know, you'll be asked what you actually think, and you'll be expected to answer. There's no expertise requirement, just a willingness to say something and to hear something back. Two hours, one question, a room full of people who love this city and won't agree about what that means. The bar stays open until 10 for whatever the conversation turns into.
Your host. Rebecca Snedeker is an artist, bioregionalist, writer, and public programming curator. She is the co-author of Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas and an editor of the recently released Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange: Experimental Modes of Teaching and Learning for the Planetary Emergency.
What we're really asking. Not whether New Orleans is worth saving, you already know your answer to that. We're asking what saving it actually requires, who's supposed to do it, and whether twenty-one years of calling ourselves resilient has been a plan or a substitute for one.
Bring an opinion. Leave with a few more.
No right answer is being handed out at the door.
How the night works:
6:00 -- we open the question. Not a lecture, not a panel, no microphone. Someone frames it in about ninety seconds, and then it belongs to the room.
8:00 -- the conversation ends and the bar stays open until 10. Most of the best talking happens after the official part is over.
Come alone or bring people. There's no networking agenda, and nobody is going to make you introduce yourself to the group.
What's here:
Wine, cocktails, mocktails, coffee, tea, and small bites. Plush seats inside surrounded by books and art, plus the courtyard when the weather cooperates.
Tuesday, August 25 · 6:00–8:00 PM · bar open until 10 PM
2128 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117
$5, non-refundable, redeemable as $5 off anything at the bar.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 5.50
