The Great Displacement: Climate Migration in America

Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that decades from now, rising seas and failed harvests will send people fleeing from their homes and home countries. But in fact climate change is already driving migration today, even in prosperous countries like the United States.

From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of North Carolina, Americans are moving. And around the world, climate-related migration is occurring in the absence of any legally recognized status for “climate refugees”. It’s a problem that is only growing more serious.

Join the Carnegie Endowment online for a conversation between Jake Bittle, a staff writer at Grist and the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, and Noah J. Gordon, acting co-director of Carnegie’s Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.

[jamesday]

I am one of the first climate migrants. After Katrina on the coast of Biloxi Mississippi … I left the area and came to Pennsylvania. I’ve been here about 20 years and I see changes in the climate here.
1. Pond we used to ice skate on hasn’t frozen in 15 years
2. Able to plant the garden 2 weeks before Mother’s Day
3. Excessive rainfalls. Used to be only in august. Now? Southern styled huge thunderstorms all summer long

[nightoftheworld]

21:27 *Deficit of awareness of climate risk from conflict of interest in growth* "Nobody wants to say, 'don't come here'—that's not something we've ever said in this country. And local governments and companies and boosters, people who currently live in places, mostly want growth. And with growth comes increased housing values, and with more housing value comes prosperity. And so it's not an easy proposition for people to say, 'don't come here it's too risky, ' or 'let's get out of here.' Nobody has any incentive to do that, and that's why I think you have this sort of general deficit of awareness of the details of the risk."

[ashdotmarie]

Greed from humans (government, developers, oil companies) tore up the land which in turn tore up the lives of people 😢

[greggibbs]

The Great Lakes area in the U.S. / Canada is the most stable at this point. However people are still moving South to hurricane and insurance-damaged Florida, heat baked and water-short Arizona and humid, heat, drought and flood prone Texas. Not to mention their politics...

[gaylecoleman]

Everyone should watch Hacking the Planet with Dane Wigington very informative.

[jamesgutting]

Yes, each fall millions of northerners migrate south for the winter, then they come back before it gets too hot down south…

[domcizek]

BUY OUT THE HOUSES, MAKE THE LOT A PARK OR HAVE THE OWNER ONLY PUT AN RV ON THE PROPERTY, THIS WAY HE CAN LEVE DURING THE NEXT FLOOD

[domcizek]

NO BODY SAID YOUR ENTILLED TO A GOOD LIFE, MANY THINGS HAPPEN, IN LIFE, GET USED TO IT

[domcizek]

ALPHFA FIELDS IN ARIZON, SHIPPED TO THE SAUDIES, THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED

[georgepotter]

Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.

[leftboxanderson]

Survival socialism is one of the best means to address this. It’s startling how we watch this grossly encroach on every part of our lives but in 2023 we continue to think these events are one offs.

[IrishRebel]

This eco-doom climate religion is really getting out of hand in 2023. lulz