Where Might Climate Migrants Go? Data Storytellers and The Big Picture

CMMR Meeting | Tuesday, June 1st 12PT/3ET
We will be introducing CMMR's Receiving Communities Series with the speakers below: the topic with climate journalists/data storytellers:

Abrahm Lustgarten who writes at ProPublica and NYTimes Magazine
Keith Schneider who writes at the New York Times, and also a correspondent for ProPublica, National Geographic, Energy News Network, Mongabay, Circle of Blue.

The session will be moderated by our very own Rachel Jacobson, Deputy Director for ASAP

[jrstsb]

Like yeast in the wine vat, you live and proliferate until all resources for life are consumed. There is hope, if the world stops providing hydrocarbons. Otherwise we're just talking to talk. We're no smarter than yeast in the end.

[kiedranFan]

Probably nowhere, from how things are going they are condemned

[PeterNordBushcraft]

If you don't believe in global warming, climate change and climate migration then you are like a Crocodile living in Africa "in denial" ("the Nile")

[jimstiles]

Where climate migrants migrate to is important. I have an odd distinction in that I grew up in the New York between the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario, and currently live in Franklin County, VT (the NW corner of the state). These are both prime migration destinations, and there are many others. However of at least equal importance is the qualities of the built places that accommodate migrants. The ideals for such places are still a bit unclear, but a few things are VERY clear. Efficiency is extraordinarily important, and I am not just talking about simple efficiencies (like heat pumps and electric cars). Systemic efficiencies are profoundly important - things like walkability so that we have few cars and few roads, and soil-healthy agriculture so we have few and smaller tractors and little or no soil supplements (which are often energy intensive or environmentally destructive in every step of the process from creation though distribution to application). Living efficiently in good places is the only path to prosperity I have any faith in when it comes to climate change.

[WalkinBeauty]

More equitable..?.we're going to all be trying to stay alive...many will be from the waterless west...not other countries

[genocanabicea]

Our ancestors didn't dig their tunnels overnight. That suggests they started before the cataclysm occured. Perhaps the atmosphere or weather had gotten to hard topside.

[PT-cufg]

Lots of hand wringing, precious little useful content here. Schneider says flat out that he chooses to think optimistically, therefore he unrealistically discounts any facts that might negatively impact his optimistic view. One such fact being that billions of people will be displaced during the next century or two and building the cities and infrastructure that they would need would load the atmosphere with a catastrophic amount of carbon. There’s no way to do that without huge amounts of fossil fuels, which are rapidly becoming harder and harder to come by.

Blind optimism is as unhelpful as denialism which discounts the science that doesn’t support its worldview. Living optimistically day to day feels good, but optimism as a tenant of long term planning on existential matters will render terrible results. We’re in a predicament without a solution because humanity will not accept living without fossil fuels. If we haven’t passed the critical tipping points yet we certainly will within the next few decades anyway. One look at the Keeling Curve tells us that. Substituting renewables for fossil fuels isn’t working because renewables are heavily front loaded with fossil fuel use to extract and process them. Then they need to be replaced four or more times each century too.

And that’s not considering the thawing permafrost and spent nuclear fuel problems. Sorry all, that’s just the way I see it. I just can’t believe that some magic discoveries are going to enable us to save the biosphere.

[robertcox]

I'm interested in selecting sites for urban development of "New Cities" for displaced populations.

[pecquet-dubalaix]

Go to Vietnam, where they can make any kind of Climate you want.

[jenr]

Um, let me um, just say, no degree um from anywhere is going to help your um ability to moderate um unless you um recognize how distracting it is to what you are saying. Just stop it. Read if you need to to, until you can give credit to moderating skills.

[genocanabicea]

As much as our arrogance may cause us to think we have an effect on climate the truth is we dont. Nor can we stop it from changing. We are entering a 12000 year cycle of cataclysm. We need to take a lesson from our ancestors and move underground. There are thousands of abandoned mines tht can be adapted to this purpose.