Location, location, location? Well, maybe not.

Or at least not yet.

Oct 07, 2023

I could sometimes sense Buddy saying, “Do you really think so, Master?”

For years I and others studying the effects of climate change have been making a firm prediction: Americans will relocate to avoid the growing risks and costs where they currently live.

One influential 2018 study suggests that 1 in 12 Americans in the Southern half of the country will move toward California, the Mountain West or the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences alone. [ProPublica]

The effects of climate change are expected to trigger a mass reshuffling of the US population in coming decades. By 2100, sea level rise alone is set to displace some 13 million coastal residents. [Bloomberg]

Geography may be the dominant factor in how well your income, your job security, and the value of your home are shielded. For instance, does your part of the country have natural defenses against flooding and drought, or energy and transportation costs? Is your hometown prepared to pay for new infrastructure or to attract new businesses? [My book, subtitled How (and where!) to safeguard your family budget and lifestyle]

It’s now easy to identify climate-vulnerable towns

One way to compare locations is through the Climate Explorer tool, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The tool allows users to compare climate data and projections for different regions, including states, across various time periods. This can be useful for understanding how the impacts of climate change may differ across different parts of the country.

A while back I tried to help people evaluate the climate risks where they live and choose where they might relocate to a more climate-proof hometown. I compiled over 20 different measures of climate-proofness for every Zip Code in America and placed them in Hometown Scorecards, assigning letter grades to each. “Is your town a C-? Is there an A- town you’d like to move to?”

Another set of links to the sources for these data can be seen here in ClimateDog.

But even if the data are available and accurate, everyone’s migration predictions are turning out to be naive and simplistic.

A lot of families still DON’T SEE local climate dangers.

Language describing climate change as a crisis and an urgent threat is met with suspicion by many. The disconnect between crisis rhetoric and their own beliefs and experiences drives doubt about the motivations of the people making these claims, sowing suspicion and deeper mistrust. [Pew Research]

Most who do relocate are NOT CHOOSING A MORE CLIMATE-PROOF TOWN.

The study found that most people STAYED within a 20-minute drive of their original homes [simply moving] to houses with lower flood risk. [NPR]

More families are actually moving TOWARD climate dangers, drawn by cheap housing, good job markets, and warm weather. [ClimateDog]

Rankings and ratings of climate-proof towns are NOT PROVING RELIABLE.

The recent flooding in Vermont, in which heavy rainfall caused destruction miles from any river, is evidence of an especially dangerous climate threat: Catastrophic flooding can increasingly happen anywhere, with almost no warning. [New York Times]

When I lived in Iran, I planned a trip to England to see my then girlfriend, Hilary. I thought it would be interesting to drive around looking at places we might choose to live. Using pre-Internet research (paper maps and guidebooks mostly) I found a town called Hoo. I was on the water (boating!); it was on a rail line to London only 30 miles away (jobs!); it was semi-rural (hiking!); and it checked some other boxes on my list. When we drove into the village, Hoo turned out to be basically a few pubs and shops serving the big ugly Kingsnorth power station and tank farm. Even today, Hilary and I call any ludicrous miscalculation in our lives ‘a Hoo.’

We have more data and better predictive models, but the TIMING IS HARD TO PREDICT.

We may believe that a big migration from climate dangers - physical and financial - is going to happen. It’s much less obvious WHEN that will happen. Some endangered families will leave moving until it’s too late. Others, like the Stookeys, may move long before they really should.

Twelve years ago, Hilary, Buddy and I sold our coastal home on a saltwater pond in Rhode Island and moved into town, well above the bay. Our home in the floodplain had scared us. A big storm could easily break through the barrier beach and open our pond to the ocean swell and tides. And sea level rise would put us further in danger. But guess what. Those dangers haven’t arrived yet. And the property is now worth a whole lot more than what we sold it for! A really bad decision to relocate? I’m still comfortable with it, given what we saw as the growing chances of serious damage. But there are lots of people - more optimistic, less risk-averse, maybe less over-informed - who would have made the decision to stay on in that risky-but-lovely location.

It IS going to happen . . .

. . . the fact that there seems to be no devil-take-the-hindmost rush to buy property in climate-proof towns does not mean doing so is a bad idea. We should still be ready to ‘beat the rush.’ And we should definitely help our children to be ready!

After all, the dangers are only accellerating.

‘Gobsmackingly bananas.’ ‘Uncharted territories.’ ‘The writing is so clearly on the wall.’ The planet had its hottest summer on record by a large margin. Last month shattered the record for the hottest September on record by such a wide margin that climate scientists say it was almost beyond belief. [NBC News]

As Charles Darwin concluded, “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”