This month on Laura Flanders and Friends, we’re revisiting conversations around the earth, the natural world and climate justice in action. This week we head to Louisiana for a special investigative report. Decades after Katrina, Louisiana is weathering a new storm: the petrochemical industry.

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Description [Original release date August 3, 2025]: While our weekly Laura Flanders & Friends shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. The following is an extended interview from our upcoming podcast special “Louisiana Survived Katrina. Will it Survive the Petrochemical Industry? — that takes a deeper dive into the stories of the frontline communities fighting back.

We speak with General Russel Honoré, the retired Lieutenant General who led the federal response to Katrina and now heads the GreenArmy, a grassroots environmental alliance.

Since the Trump administration returned to office in 2025, a surge of federally approved LNG export plants has swept across Louisiana’s coast. Honoré warns these developments are accelerating land loss, worsening hurricane impacts, and deepening the crisis for communities already facing climate displacement. Many have been forced to move multiple times as storms intensify, floodwaters rise, and petrochemical pollution endangers public health—especially in Black, Indigenous, and working-class areas.

In this urgent and unfiltered interview, General Honoré speaks out about government capture, corporate corruption, and the growing disconnect between environmental policy and public survival. For him, real resilience means challenging the industries and institutions that continue to put profit ahead of people.

GUEST:  General Russel L. Honoré: Decorated 37-Year Army Veteran; Commander, Joint Task Force Katrina; Founder, GreenARMY

 

Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel Sundays at 11:00am, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast.

Full Episode Notes are located HERE.

 

RESOURCES:

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•  Colette Pichon Battle on Climate Justice Reparations- Watch / Listen:  Episode, Full Conversation

•  BIPOC Media Answers the Call: Community Action After Hurricane Helene- Watch / Listen:  Episode, Full Conversation

•  Before the Ground Runs Dry: BIPOC Media on the US Water Crisis: Watch / Listen:  Episode

Related Articles and Resources:

• War in Iran increases demand for U.S. liquified natural gas providers, by Drew Hawkins, March 13, 2026, Morning Edition - NPR 

•  Fishfolk are on the frontlines of the gas export boom, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, threatens the way of life on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, January 25, 2025, Southern Environmental Law Center

•  The Biden Administration’s Next Big Climate Decision.  The liquefied-natural-gas-buildout-and fossil-fuel exports-challenge progress on global warming.  September 22, 2023,  By Bill McKibben, October 31, 2023, The New Yorker

•  Pervasive racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. petrochemical workforce, by Kimberly Terrell, Gianna St. Julien, Michael Ash, September 2025 Science Direct

 

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