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Think now: what motivates a family to leave their home and undertake a journey of thousands of miles on foot to seek a better life? Answer: something really terrible.
Slowly, sleepily, eyes blinking in the unaccustomed light, the mainstream media are awakening to the single most important fact of human life in 2021: the long-expected, long-predicted, long emergency whose name no right-wing politician must ever utter — global climate change — is no longer predicted, no longer expected, no longer in our future. It’s here.
During Thanksgiving week, two stories appeared at the same time in Politico, one of the pillars these days of Washington DC journalism; one of them was titled, “How ‘Climate Migrants’ are Roiling American Politics,” the other, “Don’t Call It Climate Change: Red States Prepare for ‘Extreme Weather.’”
Those familiar with the subject have long understood that the refugees pouring over our southern border, like those overwhelming southern Europe from Africa and England from France, are mostly fleeing the destructive effects of climate change in their home countries. But even knowing that, it is startling to realize the size and number of the migrations going on within the United States;
- a quarter of a million people fled Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Since then more than 30 major hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S.;
- 10,000 Puerto Ricans fled their hurricane-lasheed country to settle in central Florida between 2017 and 2020;
- over 4,000 people relocated after their California neighborhood was devastated by the 2018 Camp fire — some of them relocated in California but a lot of them went to Idaho. The Camp fire burned over 240 square miles, killed 85 people, and was one of over 8,500 wildfires in California that year;
- real estate prices in Florida are beginning to reflect the fact that a growing trickle of people are fleeing their beachfront homes to live either farther inland or farther north.
People facing the western drought, the northwestern and southwestern heat waves, the California wildfires, the rising seas along the coasts, the raging hurricanes that plague the South and Southeast, the vicious tornado season in the Midwest, are beginning to face the fact that staying where they are could kill them. A few years ago, they began to move.
The early trickles have become streams, and before long will be raging torrents adding to the depredations of water, wind and fire. If you want a preview of what is surely coming, read my post from 2015 about a little appreciated aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: “Coming Soon to Us All: A Choice Worse than Sophie’s.”
Here’s another thing: Some of us are fortunate to live in areas not yet directly threatened by climate change. You know, like the people in the Pacific Northwest thought of themselves until last year. But whether or not we experience the lash of hurricanes, the heat of wildfires or the ruination of rampaging seas, we are almost certain to see, within a very few years, our roads and streets fill with trudging, desperate refugees trying to stay alive.
A few of us will think about the citizens of Gretna, Louisiana, and the incident at the Route 90 Bridge. But it won’t help. We won’t be ready. And we won’t know what to do.
Going out for a pleasant bike ride this afternoon. Why not? My porch thermometer reads a balmy 55 degrees. Not bad for Columbus, Georgia. Unfortunately, I live in Columbus, Ohio.
I guess climate is everywhere.
Yeah, I’m a climate retiree. Lived in SF Bay area for 30 years and retired 5 years ago to the central Oregon coastal range – on 25 acres of forest/oak grassland. Picked the area because of the prodigious (by CA standards) rainfall. So, there’s been a drought here for 3 or 4 years. Maybe 25% less rain. This summer we had 112 degrees for 3 or 4 days – unheard of. The Douglas fir trees have lost more needles this past fall than any prior year. I’m thinking I should have moved to Canada or Alaska. No place is safe and in time I’ll probably be burned out.
I moved to Alaska in 1993, partly foreseeing what was coming and partly to get away from all the rest of us. Not sure it will be the safe haven hoped for any longer. Not a lot of good soil to grow crops, and now, it gets brutally hot in the summer or just rains like hell. Lots of wildfires. Subject to long, vulnerable supply chains. But people are slowly moving up here, hoping.
My Michigan farm has become a summertime hell. Not that there’s any hard work needing to be done in the summer (putting up hay?). My former home in the PNW now gets ravaged by “heat domes” worse than anything we’ve yet experienced in the midwest. Choking on smoke there is now an annual summer event, when it never happened while I was growing up. My summer vacation (the first from the farm in 13 years) narrowly escaped complete failure by two weeks as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area closed entirely for the first time in history. Yup, I’d say we’re hosed.
Tom & al.,
I’d like to offer my trilogy, “Inter States,” set in 2040 (too late?) that uses speculative fiction to explore this a migration from individual, family, and political standpoints. The third book, ‘Oligarchs’ Gambit,’ has just come out. What prompted me to undertake this project was Gelbspan’s 2004 non-fiction book “Boiling Point”. I read it and wondered, how can this not be of massive, disruptive importance? That was almost 18 years ago. What I did not foresee was the fact that right-wing tribalism requires active suppression of any consideration of the climate crisis. (Will this intensify or eventually go away?)
Climate refugees ( including refugees from wars whose major underlying cause is climate change and the resulting depletion of food and other resources) have been common throughout history. Population numbers, resource depletion, the acceleration of the warming of the planet and accompanying severe weather patterns have created a perfect storm for the largest movement of displaced people ever seen. We are seeing it now. There really is nowhere to hide from this, whether in a Appalachian Valley, northern Canada, Tasmania or a survivalist bunker in the midwest.
In a post a while ago I spoke of the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief. The final being acceptance. Acceptance can take two forms, passive (giving up) and proactive (which I will call hope for lack of a better term). Being proactive includes choosing carefully where you live. Avoid living on a flood plain, in a fire shaped ecosystem (semi-arid pine forests), on a coastline ecosystem shaped by numerous hurricanes and tropical storms every year. Choose plants and livestock that are resilient, perennial and do not require regular large inputs of grain or synthetic fertilizer. Our biggest issue is that we are not living “with” the earth and paying attention to what shapes it, but rather we are living “on” it, viewing it as a place to put our feet.
We are headed down a path that will end up in a very different place than we are now as a civilization. It is going to be a brutal journey, but humans are extremely adaptable and some will be there to begin a new journey. Hopefully having learned some common sense.
Well said. Thank you.
Well said, indeed!
As the aggressive ‘new variant’ of a seven-million-year-old linage, Homo Sapiens began expanding from the outset. Inter-tribal squabbles over strained resources were easily avoided through the migration of growing populations into virgin territories. Of course, the migrants would need to control, among other things, competing predator species, including primitive Hominids. And would need to contrive satisfactory adjustments to the oddities of novel environments. Eventually, the Clever Ape found that technology, agriculture and (their bastard offspring) civilization could mitigate the adverse effects of an ever-expanding population into an ever-shrinking natural landscape. Even God was impressed: “…nothing will be unattainable to them.” — Genesis 11:6.
As is his wont, God changed his tune later on: “(in the last days) man will be plagued by pestilences and wild animals.” — Revelation 6:8.
I’m going to assume that Covid and bats qualify, but who knows?
re: Covid, bats and who knows?
To paraphrase William Money in The Unforgiven, “Bat’s got nothing to do with this.”
At least that’s my current position, and whether or not this makes me a conspiracy theorist is impossible to say, because as its wont, the Official Narrative keeps changing Its tune.
I’m not sure I get your point, but if William Munny* said it, it must be gospel…I relent.
*I checked the spelling. Superb flick, incidentally.
“We will be asked to give help to distressed neighbors when giving that help will endanger our own survival. How will we answer?”
Good question.
Note: Yours truly brining you a “weather” update from World Capitol of Snow, Buffalo, NY. It no longer snows here.
When writing about the diaspora out of MENA and Central
America (disaspora being the proper word despite it being ignored by most readers), I typically cite political, economic, and ecological factors. It’s a stew of influences. Ecosystem disruptions stemming from the climate emergency diminish habitability not just for humans, of course. Nonhuman animals are also migrating out of the tropics, and invasive plant species appear to be northbound. Probably not fair to say that migrants of all types figured out the dystopian plot, but their behaviors indicate precisely what you are reminding us of: the world is changing quickly and will soon be quite unlike that of our parents and grandparents.
Well, visiting Phoenix is … interesting. I do like being out of the atmospheric rivers of the PNW. The Phoenix area is booming! Housing prices have gone up over 30% this year. The weather report gave the data – every day in November was 5 to 10 degrees over average and broke records. But then then they make jokes. Ha ha, just a little warm weather and the previous records were a long time ago so obviously nothing new here. Money is coming here, new freeways and construction everywhere.
What are they thinking?
“Thinking” does not enter into it.
Global climate migration or “severe weather” mentioned in the article stressed the American experience of surviving rapidly increasing weather instabilities resultant from climate change, period. Been there, done that.
Yet the US faces what some folks call an open border. Little does the Press cover the number of goverment deportations. We have been skating on thin ice with our klugey immigration laws. We are are about to join Europe in hosting millions of climate refugees from abroad whether we want to or not. And i for one would like the Press and our country to prepare for this in earnest!
If remembering what it is like to be displaced by climate disaster will help people understand how we must treat the refugees like our own, then I can’t wait for us to get cracking!
Over 10 years ago I conceived escaping the coming societal collapse and carnage brought on by peak oil and climate change. Headed back to the home turf of Canadian southwest, aka PNW believing it would be spared from the effects. 2021 has proved me wrong.
Went through the heat dome of summer with temps getting awfully close to 50C in the shade. The forest fires started right away and the nearby town of Lytton burned down. Our area was covered by smoke most of the summer and we were on evacuation alerts with the go-bag at the door. At least we weren’t evacuated and we live next to a big lake with lots of water (for now).
The the atmospheric rivers hit flooding a significant part of the Fraser Valley and washing out the highways connecting Vancouver to the rest of Canada. The south connection to Washington is still intact. Our town is the nexus for all the local climate refugees. Hotels have been sold out for months. All the usual attraction activities such as baseball tournaments have been put off for another year.
I don’t think the U.S. gets the news about the flooding devastation in BC. Its on a scale of NOLA during Katrina or Houston. But, ya know, its above the 49th parallel so doesn’t count anyway. If one detects a tone of sarcastic annoyance with U.S. news media they would be correct.
What an awful story. I am sorry you are going through that. These things often don’t trend in straight lines, maybe you’ll get a little moderation soon that will give you time to decide how to react. Good luck.
The issue is, as it is with many people, is one just doesn’t have any certainty about where to go, or what would be affective anyway. The climate change effects have impacted in ways that I couldn’t imagine from my linear thinking, non-climate science self frame of references. As an electrical engineer, we think we can have a better chance than most to understand the complex systems and ramifications. However, this is far beyond my competency.
Will next year also have multiple forest fires with another year of choking on smoke? The water levels in the lake dropped much sooner and greater magnitude requiring the boats to be hauled out about a month early. Not near the levels of Mead or Powell, just indicative.