Climate Control Beyond Capitalism: Katrina, 20 Years On
Eric Gabourel speaking on the state of New Orleans, 20 years after Hurricane Katrina. His talk was part of the PSL Forum on Hurricane Policies Beyond Capitalism.
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, the climate crisis has only sharpened its edge on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. If Katrina revealed the deadly consequences of racism, classism, and profit-driven disaster response, the decades since have shown how deeply these forces continue to structure climate risk. The ruling order promises “resilience” but delivers only bigger walls, higher bills, and worsening vulnerability—because the same profit structures that failed us in 2005 are still in charge today.
What we have learned is simple but brutal. As long as the essential systems of survival—energy, housing, water, and mobility—are subordinated to private profit, disaster will reproduce itself again and again.
Where We’re At
Two decades on, New Orleans remains suspended between survival and collapse. Billions have been poured into levees and floodwalls, but the land beneath us continues to sink. The very ground that the city rests on is descending, while storm protection remains precarious. Wetlands, our first line of defense, are vanishing faster than ever. The much-heralded $3 billion Mid-Barataria sediment diversion was recently scrapped, leaving the coast undefended against rising seas and storm surge.
At the same time, summers grow hotter and the electrical grid grows weaker. The Entergy monopoly has left New Orleanians in deadly blackouts, trapped in sweltering apartments while executives collect bonuses. Our water system is just as precarious. Drought and saltwater intrusion threaten to cut the city off from drinking water, and yet there is no comprehensive plan in place.
The very physics of storms are shifting. The Gulf warms faster than almost anywhere on Earth, producing hurricanes that are stronger, wetter, and faster-forming, while recovery systems remain as unequal as they were in 2005. Insurance companies, meanwhile, wage open class war. Premiums skyrocket, pricing working-class residents out of the city, while developers and speculators continue to collect subsidies. On top of it all, the fossil buildout continues. Rather than phasing out the industry responsible for the crisis, the state doubles down on petrochemical expansion in “Cancer Alley,” deepening both climate chaos and toxic exposure.
In short, the capitalist model of “resilience” is a fraud. It walls off the rich and leaves everyone else exposed.
Socialist Infrastructure Solutions
To face the storms to come, we cannot simply adapt within the framework that created this catastrophe. We need socialist infrastructure—a system where survival is not a commodity, where climate labor is socially guaranteed, and where planning is guided by human need, not corporate profit.
A socialist New Orleans would begin by reclaiming power from the private monopolies. Entergy New Orleans must be municipalized and run as a public utility, with neighborhood-scale solar and battery microgrids ensuring no community is ever again abandoned in the dark. A resilient grid would be built with union labor, apprenticeships, and enforceable project-labor agreements—linking climate survival with dignified work.
Housing, too, must be treated as climate infrastructure. After Katrina, public housing was demolished in the name of privatization; today we need a public developer to construct and retrofit thousands of permanently affordable, storm-safe units. Every household must have access to cooling during brutal summers as a right, not a privilege.
Water, land, and coast must remain public. The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans must be fixed, not privatized. Wetland restoration must be treated as a survival plan, employing thousands in marsh creation, sediment diversions, and flood defense. Financial survival must be guaranteed as well. A city public insurer and a municipal public bank could stabilize premiums, protect residents from displacement, and direct investment into housing, renewable energy, and coastal defense.
New Orleans must also become a sponge city. Instead of paving over land and funneling stormwater into overwhelmed pumps, we need to redesign the city to absorb, store, and reuse water. That means rain gardens, permeable streets, green roofs, expanded tree canopy, and connected greenways that double as drainage systems. A sponge city approach recognizes that we cannot fight water with walls alone—we must live with it, slow it, and spread it. Done publicly and collectively, this transformation would create thousands of jobs while making neighborhoods cooler, greener, and safer.
Ending the sacrifice zone economy is urgent. That means rejecting new gas plants, halting greenwashed carbon-capture projects in frontline neighborhoods, and ensuring a just transition for workers in fossil industries into public climate jobs. It means fare-free transit, shaded bus stops, a citywide grid of protected bike lanes. It means building a local economy of repair and manufacturing cooperatives for bikes, buses, and clean energy—ensuring that resilience is rooted in community control.
Above all, planning itself must be democratized. Watershed councils composed of workers, tenants, first nations, fishers, and scientists should hold binding power over energy, housing, and coastal budgets. Every major resilience project must come with enforceable community benefits and labor agreements, guaranteeing that public funds serve the public good.
Conclusion
Katrina was never a “natural disaster.” It was the brutal exposure of how capitalism decides who lives and who dies. Twenty years later, the same system is still gambling with our survival. The only path forward is to break from profit-driven “resilience” and build socialist climate infrastructure rooted in justice, democracy, and collective survival.
The choice is stark: climate control beyond capitalism—or disaster without end.