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220 CONCLUSION A Sustainable Energy Coast for the Twenty-First Century F or much of the last century, the wetlands in coastal Louisiana have been critical to the development of America’s energy supplies. To expand oil and gas development offshore, the industry built a vast network of pipelines and pipeline canals through the fragile Louisiana coastal areas. Building this pipeline system was crucial to the industry because it provided a link between oil and gas supplies offshore and markets onshore. But in the process of transforming this wetland region into an energy coast of national importance, the industry altered natural ecological processes that contributed to the land loss phenomenon. For the last few decades, wetland loss and restoration has indeed become a political, environmental, and economic game changer in the Louisiana Gulf Coast and throughout America. Efforts to mitigate these losses have been difficult, given the conflicting desires of the public to continue oil and gas development while also pursuing large-scale and expensive restoration efforts in the face of sea level rise and climate change. Major events during the 2000s—chief among them Hurricane Katrina and the Macondo oil spill—amplified the coastal crisis and convinced stakeholders, including the federal government and the oil and gas industry, to pursue a much larger national effort to protect the imperiled coast and sustain America’s energy supplies from the Gulf. Decisions made about building a pipeline network through coastal marshes led to particular choices of technology, standard practices, and trade-offs. Each technological jump and industry expansion brought a new wave of environmental changes that governmental agencies and landowners permitted. Gradually, over decades, scientists and others identified ways that energy technology and industry land use patterns affected the landscape and other natural resources. Their growing knowledge educated those active in the wetlands and a larger American audience about the importance of this coastal system and the need to better manage it, restore it, and make it sustainable for the decades ahead. 221 CONCLUSION Since the end of World War II, the Gulf Coast has been a leading source of America’s domestic energy resources. With much of the nation’s offshore waters blocked off from development, expanding production in the Gulf was necessary (and still is) for economic growth. Energy supplies from the Gulf benefited the entire nation, but the environmental impacts of these activities were felt only locally. This held true until nationally important economic activities became increasingly exposed to changing environmental conditions. Protecting critical energy infrastructure, such as ports, roads, and the thousands of miles of buried pipelines along the coast, highlighted the vulnerability of the Gulf Coast’s energy assets to persistent storm surges and climate risk. The loss of storm surge-buffering marshes and barrier islands has left many of these energy assets , coastal communities, and even urban centers like New Orleans critically exposed. Sustaining the coastal wetlands and the coastal energy infrastructure should no longer be viewed as separate goals. (See Figure 44.) Recent events in the Gulf serve as a stark reminder of the tension that underlies oil and gas development and coastal protection and restoration. The need to safely develop additional petroleum resources offshore while also protecting valuable coastal resources from those operations is a key issue that echoes similar concerns from the past. The imperative to balance national energy security with environmental protection will continue to inform decisions about offshore oil and gas development and other intense forms of energy extraction , such as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” The controversial offshore drilling moratorium that President Obama’s administration put in place shortly after the tragic blowout and oil spill of 2010 uncovered a side of the culture in the Gulf Coast that probably puzzled most outsiders. The outpouring of concern from the people of south Louisiana and neighboring coastal states over the temporary drilling ban, the subsequent reduction in new permits, and the loss of economic activity revealed to the larger public the influence of the oil and gas industry on the socioeconomic dynamics of the region. People truly identified with America’s Energy Coast, even as oil drowned marshes. Nevertheless, the passage of the 2012 RESTORE Act (providing potential billions in oil spill fines to coastal states for restoration) clearly indicated the extent of the Gulf region’s growing political power and the influence of Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis on federal policy making. It is important to recognize the industry’s historical...

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