Migrating to Hell for Lower Taxes and Cheaper Housing

    

If you do not have school-aged children or simply do not believe that COVID is a genuine threat, if you hate colder weather, expensive real estate, a high cost of living and staggering local taxes of every kind… and if your job is not location dependent or you are retired… you might consider doing what so many Americans have been and are doing: Leaving the colder or expensive place and moving to the warmer cheaper place. You may not care about descending desertification, alternatively coastal erosion, flooding or dangerous tropic storms. The states that offer cheaper, warmer lifestyles with lower costs are primarily red states, those worst prepared for the accelerating threats of climate change and most devastated by all things COVID. 

Even if there are short term benefits and you side-step the COVID inanity, water shortages, fires and floods, exceptionally heavy downpours from exceptionally damaging storms, maybe more than a few tornados, failing power grids and roads from a lack of infrastructure investment, coastal erosion, sink holes and collapsing support for buildings, power outages and record levels of searing heat… long, long bouts of unrelenting intolerable weather… too hot, with water rationing in the cards… assuming there is water to be rationed.

Indeed for all the damage from COVID and the selfish-resisters, what the vast majority of those who will face the worst – Y, Z and following generations – fear the most is not political polarization/gridlock (with intolerance, racism and violence thrown in the mix) or even COVID’s likely longer term persistence; what they are worried most about, what their unthinking and seemingly unfeeling parents and grandparents have left as the prior generations’ legacy gift to its children… is the extreme impact being imposed on them by accelerating climate change. And it is not a theory, they know it is not “just normal cyclical climate patterns,” it is hard and fast fact… with a whole lot of irreversibility built in. The parents are impacted the least. The “kids” will live with this reality vastly more intensely.

So, as many escape to what they think will be a more affordable lifestyle, they may soon discover their own version of hell on earth. They are not flocking to the northern cities, where water will remain abundant and climate is, subject to the Polar Vortex, likely to moderate somewhat over the coming years… and where real estate and the cost of living are most reasonable, often lower than those popular “warm” (read: intolerably hot) venues. In addition to the Census graphic showing migration patterns within the United States, the above pictures reflect dying Arizona farmland as well as recurring flooding in Miami and Houston after heavy tropical downpours.

Adele Peters, writing for the August 24th FastCompany.com, fills in some blanks: “In Phoenix, where a drought has lasted for 27 years so far, one source of water—the Colorado River—may soon dry up. The city is also getting hotter, with a record number of days over 110 degrees Fahrenheit in 2020. At the same time, the population continues to expand. Over the last decade, Phoenix grew faster than any other American city, and Arizona was one of the fastest-growing states.

“In Michigan, on the other hand, a state that’s likely to be relatively less likely to be impacted by climate change, the population grew slowly. A recent Census Bureau map shows the overall trend [above]: Many Americans have been moving to areas that are likely going to be harder hit by climate impacts.

“Florida, where coastal cities are facing stronger hurricanes and more flooding as sea levels rise, was among the top 10 fastest-growing states between 2010 and 2020. (The trajectory has continued through the pandemic, as an estimated 330,000 additional people moved to Florida between April 2020 and April 2021.) Utah, with the fastest population growth by percentage, is dealing with extreme drought, wildfires, and ongoing air pollution from fires in other states like California. Texas, another quickly growing state, is one of the places most at risk from both extreme heat and drought…

“‘The White House has looked at international climate migration, and there’s a whole working group on that now, but there’s nothing on domestic climate migration,’ says Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate at the Tulane School of Architecture who studies climate change adaptation and the built environment. ‘I think that’s a missed opportunity on many fronts.’

“People move for many reasons, of course, and climate change still isn’t necessarily a major factor. In Paradise, California, many people are now rebuilding their homes, and the population is surging, three years after the town was destroyed by a wildfire—even though the chances of another major fire are high. But it seems likely that growing numbers of people may choose to move because of climate change over time. (There might be some early signs of this now, as Maine, a place likely to be a little less impacted by climate change, became one of the more popular places for people to move in the first quarter of this year, according to data from the relocation tech company Updater.) And better planning by the government, at all levels, could help that happen more slowly.” 

Maine is beautiful but rather cold in the winters, and it is not exactly a job mecca. Sure, climate-vulnerable cities and states are planning for the approaching disasters, but I suspect those who will inevitably be subjected to those plans have no idea if they will be able to tolerate the required (and legally mandated) sacrifices and limitations. There will be changes. Huge changes.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our general lackadaisical response to climate change, coupled with the mass of right-wing climate change deniers, suggests that traditional warm weather “escape” driven migration just might produce very much the opposite of expectations.