We already are experiencing climate change.
This is not our grandchildren. This is
today. This is right now.
Some of us are in aircraft carriers and some of us are
in dinghies as it goes.
It was very intense to live in a place where wildfires
were becoming an everyday, very normal reality.
Natural disasters hit nearly one in ten American homes in
2021, leading to an estimated $56.92 billion in
property damage.
We're fighting systems and laws and policies that don't
quite fit the new climate reality.
One of the biggest issues with climate change is that
people have been living in riskier environments.
Think a coastal community or a mountain house
surrounded by a dry forest.
Nowhere is completely safe from climate change, but
there is some good news.
Adaptation efforts are working and there are some
places where Americans can move to escape the worst
impacts of climate disasters.
There are cities that are going to fare better under
climate conditions and are already.
These cities, particularly around the Great Lakes, I
think are considered to have some superior
advantage.
But with home prices soaring nationally, location isn't
the only factor in finding a safe haven.
Issues of justice and equity have to be addressed now
before mass migration start moving to haven cities.
You can't just say I'm a climate destination because
I'm in Wisconsin and we're going to be fine.
That's absolutely not true.
You must earn it.
It's not a passive title.
So where can Americans go to escape climate change and
can we afford to live there?
Researchers have designated some cities as climate
havens or climate destinations.
Unfortunately, they don't include major cities like
LA, San Francisco or where I live in Brooklyn, New
York.
I would define a climate destination as a location
that has perhaps more manageable climate impacts.
That is, there's no exposure to sea level rise.
There's less risk of wildfires and hurricanes.
They have a ready access to fresh water, and they may be
a legacy city, which means that they have a history of
being built out for a much larger population.
Marandi also requires climate destinations to have
plans to decarbonize and address affordable housing.
Jesse Keenan identified a few lucky cities that meet
these criteria.
So in the United States, a variety of different cities
have strengths and weaknesses in terms of their
capacity to onboard climate migrants.
But some of those that come to mind are Asheville, North
Carolina. Knoxville, Tennessee.
Toledo, Ohio, Duluth, Minnesota, Buffalo, New
York, Rochester, New York, Burlington, Vermont.
Keenan also sees promise in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Madison
and Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
Marandi and her research partner have added to that
list. Cincinnati, Ohio, Charleston, South Carolina,
Chico, California, which absorbed many migrants
fleeing the camp fire in 2018.
Ann Arbor, Michigan.
And maybe surprisingly, Orlando, Florida.
You would say, Oh, well, they're in Florida.
They must be high risk.
And yes, there are some risks.
But again, like Cincinnati, Orlando is working really
hard to decarbonize and they're doing it in such a
big way. They're really growing their green economy.
They're looking at their affordable housing.
They are in quite a housing crunch right now, but
they're very aware of it.
They're working on it.
Affordable housing is a key ingredient in all of this.
About half of Americans say affordable housing is a
major problem in their local community.
Maggie Lawson, a chef and visual artist, moved to
Cincinnati from Oakland in 2020.
What made you move from Oakland to Cincinnati?
Many, many things, as one might imagine, because
they're very different cities and very different
lifestyle. I think the first thing was just my
housing was not tenable.
I had roommates and I was approaching 40 and I was
like, This is not the life for me.
I couldn't afford to buy a house.
Lawson also wanted to be able to support her aging
parents financially and cannot do so in the
competitive financial environment of Oakland.
She was also concerned about the impact of
wildfires on her parent's health.
The smoke just descends on the city for weeks on end
and it's really unpredictable.
She grew up about 45 minutes outside of Cincinnati and
went to undergrad there.
I didn't envision moving back.
It was kind of a surprise to me when I decided to do
that.
That type of move is consistent with Miranda's
research.
People go to where they have people.
But Lawson's move is exceptional for its
distance.
Most people tend to make moves in their own county.
The problem arises when you consider that about 30% of
Americans live on a coast.
We could expect up to 63 million people who live
in the low elevation coastal zone to need to
either move or relocate somewhere else.
So there are a lot of people at risk.
Places like my community in South Louisiana are going to
be taken by the sea.
So people are going to have to figure out what to do.
Some experts like Kenan suggests moving from, say,
Miami to Duluth.
Check out his proposed ad campaign for the Minnesotan
Winter.
No amount of marketing campaign is going to shape
the decisions that you make in the immediate aftermath
of a disaster. I know I myself have been displaced
right now from Hurricane Ida.
It's not easy, but I think we have to think in the long
term and recognize that we're going to build a
community for today.
And that's going to be the foundation for the building
of a community for tomorrow.
Climate havens like Cincinnati have been
investing in infrastructure to support a new wave of
residents while building for a low carbon future.
I see climate migration as an opportunity for these
cities to avoid the mistakes of urban sprawl.
They often have a vibrant, walkable downtown that might
just need a little bit of revitalization.
And so I live in this really progressive little
neighborhood and we have a really sweet farmers market.
It's not huge, but people are really invested in it.
So some of the farmers that I'm partnering with and I'm
working with in my business have stands there and have
gotten to know them through that space.
Climate havens create opportunities for new and
existing residents to work together and established
farmers market, like the one Lawson goes to, is a
great example. Big employers also referred to
as anchor institutions like hospitals or universities,
can play a major role.
How can we help people who are already in these cities
in the receiving zones? We don't want them to be
crowded out. How can we think about jobs, the tax
base? All of this is part of a broader economic
development strategy, again, to think about a
sustainable economy.
Migration is not a problem to be dealt with.
Migration is a natural way of being as humans, and it's
one that we're going to have to reconsider.
We don't question wealthy people who go to their
summer houses around their migration patterns, but
that's exactly what they're doing. Migration is quite
natural. It's only questioned based on your
income level and your skin color.
And this is where we have to do a lot of educating our
society and our community and even shifting how we
look at migration.
What can local governments do?
They can prepare, they can start having these
conversations, they can invest in their affordable
housing. They can start preparing for their own
climate risks so that even if they are in taking more
people, they are still prepared.
This is an opportunity for us to show the best of who
we are as a human society, as a nation, and as
individual communities who are stepping up.
It's really about building communities and people are
going to come in.
And one of the things that helps bridge our society
together is our ability to accommodate newcomers.
This is the story of America.
It's the story of immigration in America.
So should we start packing now?
I wouldn't urge anyone to move immediately unless
they're under immediate threat. But I would say
start to look at your risk.
It's often a confluence of events that force people to
move.
After three years of really intense fire seasons, I was
really clear that a the cost of living was not
manageable and being in that environment was really
hard on my nervous system and you just don't really
understand the long term impacts that like wildfires
can have on your body.
Lawson felt being unable to afford the life she wanted
in California, coupled with the unpredictable fire
season, the time had come to leave.
That process has to be one rooted in autonomy of
something that I've had to learn.
You know, not everybody is going to move.
Not everybody wants to move.
Some people's identity is tied to a place and some
people's life is tied to a place.
If you're really relying on this house as a nest egg,
you're a homeowner.
Equity is part of your investment strategy.
You may very well want to consider moving much sooner
than later because your investment is declining.
If it's in a high risk area such as a sea level rise
zone, it is declining.
Now on an annual basis.
You can look at FEMA flood maps, you can look at first
three foundation, maybe one day when you're bored, just
like, oh, let's look at our flood risk, honey.
Right? And then you can if you're informed, you can
start making decisions.
But not everyone can afford to move, even if they want
to.
There's a lot of costs that come, including the cost of
being removed from your loved ones and from your
friends, those that loss of social capital.
But there's also benefits, and that's the benefit of
being part of a new community. That's the
benefit of rebuilding something or building
something that is truly sustainable, walking away
from our high carbon lifestyle into a low carbon
lifestyle.
When we think about people having the autonomy to move
right now, we've got to understand what we're
saying. We're talking about people with wealth.
What keeps a lot of us up at night is that a market
driven retreat will leave a ton of
impoverished people behind.
So there's a huge risk in not sort of
doing this managed or planned relocation ahead of
time.
If cities want to do climate migration right, there are a
few things they need to start thinking about now.
One is, yes, where are the opportunities?
A simple repurposing of land that has already been
made for some sort of mass development.
The other thing we need to really keep in mind is what
is going to happen in the long term to the residents
who are already there.
And this is work, this is education.
This is setting up programs, not social
programs that give.
People charity, but instead socializing and caring
programs that give people power and connection into a
new community. And third, I think we're going to have to
respect culture that comes in.
I mean, we have to be able to move from a place of our
own power in receiving folks in power, receiving
folks with dignity and receiving folks honoring
their own autonomy and honoring ours and making
sure that the resources that we have together,
culture, water and everything in between are
ours collectively.
There are lots of structural changes that residents can
do to increase the life cycle of a community.
For example, when I was reporting on hurricanes and
sea level rise in Miami Beach, Florida, residents
were elevating their homes to avoid the rising seas.
And in fact, there's many infrastructure possibilities
that we can do to particularly with water and
as well as extreme heat, for instance, with extreme
heat, planting more trees and building more biomass to
help cool and shelter us in the shade.
But on a bigger scale, reducing our carbon
emissions will help stem the flow of climate
migrants.
One of our best defenses against large scale
displacement is climate mitigation, which means
reducing our emissions.
So we cannot just continue to fill this bathtub full of
water.
What do we do to get people out of harm's way as we stop
fossil fuel drilling, as we stop the extraction?
That is how we get people out of harm's way.
Local municipalities can also make smart choices to
make it easier for residents to lower their
carbon footprints.
When we're thinking about what is this community
preparing for for the next ten years or 20 years,
perhaps elevating homes does the trick.
But when you're talking about 50 to 100 years, which
is very, very difficult for communities to
conceptualize, some of these fixes are maybe not
the best idea. They may give that false impression
of security.
But I think now is the time for greater engagement and
democratic processes to hold and really participate,
not just hold leaders accountable, but participate
in the process of envisioning what you want
your city to look like.