This interview is a speculative exploration of climate adaptation choices, set in 2035. Delphine Verret is a composite character whose story reflects patterns documented in current research on managed retreat and climate migration decisions.
I meet Delphine Verret on what's left of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, though "meet" might be generous. She lives on the mainland now, twenty minutes north in a FEMA trailer that's somehow become permanent. The island itself is mostly memory at this point, a shrinking sandbar where her family's house stood until 2033. She still goes back twice a week, checking on her neighbor Claude's dock. Nobody's tied a boat to it in four years.
The famous 2024 relocation split her family down the middle. The one that cost $48 million to move about a hundred people. Her older brother Marc took the deal, moved to a planned community outside Baton Rouge. Her younger sister Celeste went to Duluth, Minnesota, of all places, chasing that "climate haven" marketing. Her parents, before they passed, took the relocation too.
Delphine was thirty-four then, working at the marina, raising two kids. She said no.
Eleven years later, she's still here. Sort of.
Why did you stay when everyone else took the money?
Delphine: You know what's funny? Everyone asks it like that. "Why did you stay?" Like staying was the weird choice. My family had been on that island since the 1830s. The weird choice was leaving.
But that's not even the real answer. The real answer is I didn't trust them. The government, the relocation people, all of it. They showed us these drawings of the new community. Nice houses, community center, everything planned out. Marc ate it up. He was like, "This is our chance to start over somewhere safe." And I just kept thinking: safe according to who? They'd been telling us the island was done for twenty years and we were still there.
Also, and this is going to sound terrible, I didn't want to live next to all those people. The new community was everyone from the island crammed together in this... planned neighborhood. Like a climate refugee theme park. My cousin went, came back to visit once in 2026, said it felt like living in a museum exhibit of our own lives.
When did you realize you might have made a mistake?
Delphine: [Long pause] October 2029. Hurricane Celeste. Yeah, same name as my sister, which felt like God having a laugh.
The water came up six feet in three hours. My daughter was twelve, my son was nine. We were on the roof of the marina building with eight other people who didn't evacuate. Coast Guard got us out, but you don't forget your kids crying like that. Thinking they're going to die.
That's when I moved us to the FEMA trailer on the mainland. Told myself it was temporary. That was six years ago.
But here's the thing, and this is what makes me crazy when I talk to Marc: his "safe" community in Baton Rouge? Flooded in 2031. Not as bad as us, but flooded. The levees failed. He calls me after, and I can hear it in his voice, this betrayal. Like he'd been promised safety and someone broke the contract.
Do you talk to your siblings about the choice?
Delphine: We try not to.
Celeste and I did a video call last Christmas, first time in two years. She's in Duluth, working at a processing plant, lives in an apartment with her girlfriend. She seems fine? But there's this thing she does now where she apologizes for everything. "Sorry, I know you're dealing with the flooding." "Sorry, I'm complaining about snow when you're—" Like she won the lottery and feels guilty about it.
Except Duluth got hit by that freak ice storm in '34, the one that killed nineteen people? She was without power for eleven days. In January. In Minnesota. So who won, exactly?
Marc and I don't really talk anymore. Last time was our dad's funeral in '32. He made some comment about how I was "still being stubborn" by staying near the island, and I said at least I didn't abandon Papa before he died.
Which was a shitty thing to say because Marc visited, he just didn't live close. But I said it anyway.
What do your kids think?
Delphine: [Laughs bitterly] My daughter moved to Houston last year. Seventeen years old, graduated high school early, got a job at a restaurant, shares an apartment with three other people. She sends money home sometimes, which... Jesus Christ, your kid shouldn't be sending you money at seventeen.
She doesn't say it, but I know she thinks I'm an idiot for staying. She's got her uncle Marc's practicality. "Mom, the island is gone. Why are you still here?" And I can't explain it in a way that doesn't sound crazy.
My son, he's different. He's fifteen, still with me. He goes out to what's left of the island, takes pictures of the water, the stumps where the oak trees were. He's got this whole Instagram thing documenting the disappearance. Kids at school think it's cool, this climate change art project.
He doesn't tell them he used to live there.
Do you regret not taking the relocation?
Delphine: Some days yes, some days no. You want me to say yes, right? That I made a terrible mistake and destroyed my family and now I'm living in a FEMA trailer as punishment for my stubbornness?
But Marc's in a house that flooded. Celeste is in Minnesota, which, I looked it up, is supposed to get hit hard by climate migration in the 2040s. Everyone's moving there, housing prices are insane, the infrastructure can't handle it. She's just earlier in the cycle I'm in.
The relocation money was $400,000 per family. Sounds like a lot until you realize it's your entire life converted to cash. Marc bought his house in Baton Rouge, put the rest in savings. That savings is almost gone now. Cost of living, his daughter's medical bills, regular life stuff. He's fifty-one and starting over financially.
I didn't take the money, but I also didn't spend it. I'm still poor, but I was poor before. At least I'm poor in a place that still feels like mine, even if most of it's underwater.
What do you wish someone had told you in 2024?
Delphine: [Stares out at the water for a long time]
That there's no right answer. Everyone acts like there's a right choice and a wrong choice, and if you just think hard enough, you'll figure out which is which. But Marc made the "right" choice and his house flooded anyway. Celeste made the "right" choice and she's lonely as hell in Minnesota, works sixty hours a week at a job she hates.
I made the "wrong" choice and I'm here. Still here. My kids are alive. I can still see the water where my grandmother's house was. When I die, someone will remember that my family was from Isle de Jean Charles, not from some planned community that didn't exist until 2024.
Also, I wish someone had told me that my family would never forgive me. Not officially. We're not dramatic like that. But there's this distance now. Marc thinks I'm irresponsible. Celeste thinks I'm tragic. My daughter thinks I'm stubborn. They're all probably right.
But you know what nobody tells you about climate change? It doesn't just change the weather. It changes who your family is.
We used to be the Verrets from Isle de Jean Charles. Now we're the Verrets who made different choices and can't talk about it at Christmas.
Are you still glad you stayed?
Delphine: Ask me tomorrow. The answer changes.