[P2P-F] Fwd: 'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration is here

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ryan Fortune <ryan.fortune2012 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 3:06 PM
Subject: 'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass
migration is here
To: <michel at p2pfoundation.net>


By the end of this century, sea level rises alone could displace 13m
people...
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=16116b32f5&e=83be33d795>


*'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration
is here*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=6fc19e4f56&e=83be33d795>

*By the end of this century, sea level rises alone could displace 13m
people. Many states will have to grapple with hordes of residents seeking
dry ground. But, as one expert says, ‘No state is unaffected by this’*



*by Oliver Milman
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=b56e8951dd&e=83be33d795>
Guardian UK 24 September 2018*

After her house flooded for the third year in a row, Elizabeth Boineau was
ready to flee. She packed her possessions into dozens of boxes, tried not
to think of the mold and mildew-covered furniture and retreated to a
second-floor condo that should be beyond the reach of pounding rains and
swelling seas.

Boineau is leaving behind a handsome, early 20th-century house in
Charleston, South Carolina, the shutters painted in the city’s eponymous
shade
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=c57009237c&e=83be33d795>
 of deep green. Last year, after Hurricane Irma introduced 8in of water
into a home Boineau was still patching up from the last flood, local
authorities agreed this historic slice of Charleston could be torn down.

“I was sloshing through the water with my puppy dog, debris was
everywhere,” she said. “I feel completely sunken. It would cost me around
$500,000 to raise the house, demolish the first floor. I’m going to rent a
place instead, on higher ground.”

Millions of Americans will confront similarly hard choices as climate
change conjures up brutal storms, flooding rains, receding coastlines and
punishing heat. Many are already opting to shift to less perilous areas of
the same city, or to havens in other states. Whole towns from Alaska to
Louisiana are looking to relocate, in their entirety, to safer ground.


*The era of climate migration is, virtually unheralded, already upon
America. *

The population shift gathering pace is so sprawling that it may rival
anything in US history. “Including all climate impacts it isn’t too
far-fetched to imagine something twice as large as the Dustbowl,” said
Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation expert at Harvard University,
referencing the 1930s upheaval in which 2.5 million people moved from the
dusty, drought-ridden plains to California.

This enormous migration will probably take place over a longer period than
the Dustbowl but its implications are both profound and opaque. It will
plunge the US into an utterly alien reality. “It is very difficult to model
human behaviour under such extreme and historically unprecedented
circumstances,” Keenan admits.

The closest analogue could be the Great Migration
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=4938b84b6c&e=83be33d795>
 – a period spanning a large chunk of the 20th century when about 6 million
black people departed the Jim Crow south for cities in the north, midwest
and west.

By the end of this century, sea level rise alone could displace 13 million
people, according to one study
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=722c2a598a&e=83be33d795>,
including 6 million in Florida. States including Louisiana, California, New
York and New Jersey will also have to grapple with hordes of residents
seeking dry ground.

“There’s not a state unaffected by this,” said demographer Mat Hauer, lead
author of the research, which is predicated on a severe 6ft sea level
increase. There are established migration preferences for some places –
south Florida to Georgia, New York to Colorado – but in many cases people
would uproot to the closest inland city, if they have the means.

“The Great Migration was out of the south into the industrialized north,
whereas this is from every coastal place in the US to every other place in
the US,” said Hauer. “Not everyone can afford to move, so we could end up
with trapped populations that would be in a downward spiral. I have a hard
time imagining what that future would be like.”

Within just a few decades, hundreds of thousands of homes on US coasts will
be chronically flooded
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=73b592dfe6&e=83be33d795>.
By the end of the century, 6ft of sea level rise would redraw the coastline
with familiar parts – such as southern Florida, chunks of North Carolina
and Virginia, much of Boston, all but a sliver of New Orleans – missing.
Warming temperatures will fuel monstrous hurricanes
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=6734500d77&e=83be33d795>
–
like the devastating triumvirate of Irma, Maria and Harvey in 2017,
followed by Florence this year – that will scatter survivors in jarring,
uncertain ways.

The projections are starting to materialize in parts of the US, forming the
contours of the climate migration to come.

“I don’t see the slightest evidence that anyone is seriously thinking about
what to do with the future climate refugee stream,” said Orrin Pilkey,
professor emeritus of coastal geology at Duke University. “It boggles the
mind to see crowds of climate refugees arriving in town and looking for
work and food.”

Pilkey’s new book – Sea Level Rise Along Americas Shores: The Slow Tsunami
– envisions apocalyptic scenes where millions of people, largely from south
Florida, will become “a stream of refugees moving to higher ground”.

“They will not be the bedraggled families carrying their few possessions on
their backs as we have seen in countless photos of people fleeing wars and
ethnic cleansing, most recently in Myanmar and Syria,” Pilkey states in his
book. “Instead, they will be well-off Americans driving to a new life in
their cars, with moving trucks behind, carrying a lifetime of memories and
possessions.”
Dejected with frigid New York winters, Chase Twichell and her husband
purchased a four-bedroom apartment in Miami Beach in 2011, with the plan of
spending at least a decade basking in the sunshine. At first, keeping a
pair of flip-flops on hand to deal with the flooded streets seemed an
acceptable quirk, until the magnitude of the encroaching seas became
apparent when the city spent $400m to elevate streets
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=5a8d92a0dc&e=83be33d795>
near
Twichell’s abode.

Twichell began to notice water pumps were spewing plastic bags, condoms and
chip packets into the bay. Friends’ balconies started getting submerged.
Twichell, a poet, found apocalyptic themes creeping into her work. Last
year, she sold the apartment to a French businessman and moved back to
upstate New York.

“It was like end of the world stuff,” she said. “It was crazy for us to
have such a big investment in such a dangerous situation.” Her neighbours
initially scolded her but now several are also selling up, fretting that
the real estate and insurance markets for properties like theirs will seize
up.

“It was horrible but fascinating to see it,” Twichell said. “It’s like we
got to see the future and it wasn’t pretty. It’s like a movie where there’s
a terrible volcano that is destroying everything, only it’s much slower
than that.”

A sense of fatalism is also starting to grip some local officials. Philip
Stoddard, mayor of South Miami, has seen a colleague, spooked by sea level
rise, move to California and some neighbours sell their houses before an
expected slump in prices. Stoddard and his wife regularly discuss buying a
fallback property, perhaps in Washington DC.

“Most people will wait for the problem to be bad to take action, that’s
what I worry about,” he said. “We can buy a lot of time, but in the end we
lose. The sea level will go over the tops of our buildings.”

Sanitation is an immediate preoccupation for Stoddard, given the large
proportion of residents who aren’t served by sewage works. “If you’re using
a septic tank and your toilet starts to overflow into your bathroom because
of water inundation, that’s a basis-of-civilization problem,” he said. “A
medieval city wasn’t a nice smelling place and they had a lot of diseases.”

Those living near the coasts will face pressures of the gradual (sea level
rise) as well as dramatic (storms) nature but people inland will also be
harried to move by climate change.

Farming techniques and technology have improved immeasurably since the
Dustbowl but rising temperatures are still expected
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=7a2d94365f&e=83be33d795>
 to diminish yields for crops such as maize, soybeans and wheat, prompting
the departure
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=96605779a5&e=83be33d795>
 of younger people from farming. By 2050, Texas county, the largest
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=014ba0b152&e=83be33d795>
 wheat-producing county in Oklahoma, could spend an extra 40 days a year
above 90F (32C) compared with now.

A study published last year
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=93cefa1707&e=83be33d795>
 found that the economies of the southern states, along with parts of the
west, will suffer disproportionately as temperatures rise. In what
researchers called potentially one of the largest transfers of wealth in US
history, the poorest third of counties are expected to lose up to 20% of
their income unless greenhouse gas emissions are severely curtailed.
Wealth, and potentially people, are expected to shift north and west.

Meanwhile, cities already struggling with heat will see wealthy residents
head for cooler climes. Last year, 155 people died in Phoenix due to a
particularly fierce summer. Increasing heat will start testing the
durability of the populace, even those shielded by air conditioning. In the
western states, wildfires are getting larger, razing homes in ever more
spectacular ways and choking thousands of people with carcinogenic smoke
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=12382d3758&e=83be33d795>
.

Further to the south, at the border, there are suggestions
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=92f602bb9d&e=83be33d795>
 that people from Central America are being nudged towards the US because
of drought and hurricanes in their homelands, part of a trend that will see as
many as
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=539e9c304e&e=83be33d795>
300
million climate refugees worldwide by 2050.

“People will get very grumpy and upset with very hot temperatures,” said
Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago who
co-authored the research on economic losses. “Even if you have air
conditioning, some areas start to look less habitable. By the middle of the
century parts of the south-west and south-east won’t look attractive to
live in.

“That insidious climate migration is the one we should worry about. The big
disasters such as hurricanes will be obvious. It’s the pressures we don’t
know or understand that will reshape population in the 21st century.”

Prodded to name refuges in the US, researchers will point to Washington and
Oregon in the Pacific north-west, where temperatures will remain bearable
and disasters unlikely to strike. Areas close to the Great Lakes and in New
England are also expected to prove increasingly attractive to those looking
to move.

By 2065, southern states are expected
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=221f85c902&e=83be33d795>
 to lose 8% of their US population share, while the north-east will
increase by 9%. A recent study forecast that the population in the western
half of the US will increase by more than 10%
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=5e9b48ef28&e=83be33d795>
 over the next 50 years due to climate migration, largely from the south
and midwest.

But these population shifts are uncertain and are bound by a tangle of
other factors and caveats. People will still largely follow paths guided by
nearby family or suitable jobs. Even those who do want to move may find
favoured locations too expensive.

Some will just grimly hang on. “With property rights as strong as they are
in the US, some people may choose to go down with the ship,” said Harvard’s
Keenan. “The question is whether they have the means and the options to do
anything else.”

“People can usually cope with being a little less comfortable, but if you
see repeated storms or severe damage to crops, that will trigger change,”
said Solomon Hsiang, who researches how climate change will affect society
at the University of California.

“There will be pressure to move a little north. It won’t be everyone,
though, it won’t be like the great migration of wildebeest in Africa. Whole
cities picking up and moving would be hugely expensive.”

Smaller towns are giving relocation a go, however. In 2016, the community
of Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana was the first place to be given
federal money
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=826d2e182d&e=83be33d795>
 to replant itself. The population, situated on an island being eaten away
by the sea, is looking to move to a former sugar cane farm 30 miles inland.

“We are called climate refugees but I hate that term,” said Chantal
Comardelle, who grew up in the Isle de Jean Charles community.

“We will be the first ones to face this in the modern US but we won’t be
the last. It’s important for us to get it right so other communities know
that they can do it, too.”

About a dozen coastal towns in Alaska are also looking to relocate, as
diminishing sea ice exposes them to storms and rising temperatures thaw the
very ground beneath them. One, Newtok, has identified a new site and has some
federal funding
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=8e9f4d286d&e=83be33d795>
to
begin uprooting itself.

A buyout of damaged and at-risk homes has already occurred in New York
City’s Staten Island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, while certain
flood-prone houses in Houston, pummeled by Hurricane Harvey last year, are
also being purchased and razed.

But the cost of doing this for all at-risk Americans would be eye-watering.
Estimates range from $200,000 to $1m per person to undertake a relocation.
If 13 million people do have to move, it seems fantastical to imagine
$13tn, or even a significant fraction of this amount, being spent by
governments to ease the way.

“As a country we aren’t set up to deal with slow-moving disasters like
this, so people around the country are on their own,” said Joel Clement, a
former Department of the Interior official who worked on the relocation of
Alaskan towns.

“In the Arctic I’m concerned we’ve left it too late. Younger people have
left because they know the places are doomed. These towns won’t be
relocated within five years and I’m sure there will be a catastrophic storm
up there. My hope is no lives will be lost.”

Ultimately, the US will have to choose what it wants to defend and hope its
ingenuity outstrips the environmental changes ranged against it. Not
everyone will be able to shelter behind fortifications like the ‘big U
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=fd99018268&e=83be33d795>’
planned to defend lower Manhattan. Wrenching decisions will have to be made
as to what and where will be sacrificed.

“We won’t see whole areas abandoned but neighborhoods will get sparse and
wild looking, the tax base will start to crumble,” said Stoddard, mayor of
South Miami. “We don’t have the laws to deal with that sort of piecemeal
retreat. It’s magical thinking to think someone else will buy out your
property.

“We need a plan as to what will be defended because at the moment the
approach is that some kid in a garage will come with a solution. There
isn’t going to be a mop and bucket big enough for this problem.”
Original Article Link
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=48c953a184&e=83be33d795>
*Straight Talk*
*Let’s call it: 30 years of above average temperatures means the climate
has changed*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=cca1d72fab&e=83be33d795>
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=6ae50466a7&e=83be33d795>
*Disaster Relief Call*
*Drought puts over 10-million children in East Africa at risk of
malnutrition and disease*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=c02e29c6a6&e=83be33d795>
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=cf2292be89&e=83be33d795>

*"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of
capitalism." *
*- Anonymous*
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