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"The Great Displacement" - a new book that suggests that climate change-induced internal American migration is well underway


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The first generation of climate migrants tries to cling to the places they call home, but bureaucrats, wallets, and an overheating planet have the final say.

 

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Patrick Garvey loved living in the Florida Keys. Famed as an oasis for quirky folks, the idyllic limestone island chain offered Garvey, who’d journeyed down from the Canadian Maritimes, the kind of off-the-beaten-track life he craved. On isolated Big Pine Key, he found his passion project, cultivating a rare tropical fruit grove. He had a wife, twin daughters, and a pet pooch. Life was good—until September of 2017, when Hurricane Irma made a turn for the Keys. With his family already out of harm’s way, he stayed put and spent harrowing hours in a nearby school shelter with hundreds of other evacuees. Emerging hours later, Garvey picked his way across the pulverized island. He found his grove with only one solitary tree.

 

Hurricanes expose the perils of living on the front porch of the climate crisis. In the coming decades, severe storms, floods, fires, heat waves, and drought will force millions of Americans to search for new homes. In The Great Displacement, journalist Jake Bittle delivers powerful stories of seven scarred communities and their people, compelled to cope with loss, unresponsive bureaucracies, and the prospect of future threats. Journeying across the South to the Southwest and into California, he digs deep into the personal experiences of these first climate crisis migrants and delivers a potent appraisal of the myriad forces already uprooting and complicating life for Americans as they scatter across the country.

 

 

 

Tracking the Erratic Path of US Climate Migrants (Bloomberg)

 

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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. Millions more will relocate in the aftermath of wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme weather as dangerous temperatures render parts of North America increasingly unbearable. 

 

In fact, America’s climate migration has already begun — though the movement is not as direct and linear as the term might suggest. And some of it is in the wrong direction. 

 

“When people think of migration, they think of somebody moving over a very long distance, voluntarily, from point A to point B — and that it happens basically one time, with an end goal in sight,” says Jake Bittle, a climate reporter for Grist and author of the new book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. But what actually happens is much more “unpredictable and chaotic,” he says — a scramble of flight and return as households try to rebuild their lives in the wake of disasters. 

 

 

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34 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

housing is a very big part of it and state lawmakers outside of CA don't seem to fucking get this

 

Maybe NY if Hochul doesn't cave again on her upzoning push. 

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40 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

housing is a very big part of it and state lawmakers outside of CA don't seem to fucking get this

 

What exactly is California doing though?  Are you suggesting more states make their housing unaffordable like California has done over the last 15 to 20 years?

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13 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

 

What exactly is California doing though?  Are you suggesting more states make their housing unaffordable like California has done over the last 15 to 20 years?

California is actively making much of their population homeless, so they will be easier to convince to move.

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9 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

 

What exactly is California doing though?  Are you suggesting more states make their housing unaffordable like California has done over the last 15 to 20 years?

Other states already are! It’s called single family housing and exclusionary zoning my guy


 

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Most places have the same fucked up zoning California is now trying to dig itself out of, it just hasn't previously been an issue because why would you move to Buttfuck Desertland Arizona when Los Angeles or San Francisco were still affordable. But now California is exporting its housing crisis in the form of sending Californians to other states (and even abroad) and then creating a crunch that those places in turn can't respond to because of the same SFH zoning. 

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One would think the conservatives here and elsewhere would be giddy as schoolgirls to state that government intervention in housing, through single family exclusionary zoning in California and elsewhere, is causing a supply crunch/low vacancy thus leading to prices increasing/affordability decreasing nationwide. If they weren’t disingenuous little shits who are largely the winners of this game of housing musical chairs instead of the principled free marketers they claim to be they’d be taking the W. 
 

but they are, so they’re not. They’re just taking the dunks on CA while not taking the next and logical step by asking why is California expensive and getting more so every day, and how can I keep my community from falling down this same path??

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to "The Great Displacement" - a new book that suggests that climate change-induced internal American migration is well underway

So many problems the US faces can eventually be traced back to zoning laws, and trying to change zoning laws is like pulling teeth. It's kind of annoying because it's like a (I hate that I'm fucking saying this) "red pill" situation. You either realize it's a problem or you sound like a fucking crash l crazy person trying to convince anyone else.

 

I've tried to convince my dad a number of times but he still just thinks "the cities have too many people" (he says from his single family home, surrounded by other single family homes in some of the most prime real estate in a major city and wondering why he has to deal with more homeless people than he used to)

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