SHELL BEACH, LA – AUGUST 22: A memorial cross for the victims of Hurricane Katrina stands in the water near the bank of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet on August 22, 2019 in Shell Beach, Louisiana. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a stretch of water dug by the Army Corps of Engineers for commercial purposes in the 1960s, is now closed to maritime shipping due to extensive saltwater intrusion, erosion, and degradation of the surrounding wetlands. According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Louisiana’s combination of rising waters and sinking land give it one of the highest rates of relative sea level rise on the planet. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles of land and wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware. In the past 30 years, as subsidence continues and the effects of climate change increase, Louisiana has been losing its costal landscape at the rate of almost a football fields worth of land every hour. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)