Climate Migration

Climate change skepticism has always been an easy sell in the U.S. Why worry about, or even believe, something that is not an immediate threat, doesn’t seem serious if it only means summer will be two or three degrees warmer, and is so far only worrisome if scientific reporting proves accurate in 2050 or 2100?

Those arguments start to fall apart when current weather is looking more and more like those scientific projections. The year 2021 is crowded with natural disasters:

• Winter ice storms that treated Texas to weather and power outages more normal to norther U.S. and Canada
• California wildfires numbered over 7,000 by early September with two million acres burned
• Hurricane Ida came ashore in New Orleans with 150 mile per hour winds and reached New York and New Jersey with flooding that destroyed towns and drowned people living in basement apartments
• Extreme heat in western states broke many all-time records, exacerbating the drought, now referred to as a megadrought, that started in 2000
• Record rainfall in August caused catastrophic flooding in Tennessee with a quarter of normal annual rainfall occurring in less than 12 hours

Add to this the realization that climbing temperatures are already pushing agriculture to cooler climes. Using a measurement called growing degree days (GDD) based upon temperature requirements for successful crop cultivation, scientists documented northward movement of 10 agricultural climate zones. This northward movement is responsible for loss of yield in corn crops in Indiana and Illinois, while boosting yields in North Dakota and Minnesota. Soybean productivity has declined in states in the South and East. Another study foresees parts of Iowa could be growing cotton.

Warmer weather in Canada has brought an increase in land planted with corn and soybeans. A report in The Economist describes moves by investors buying fields and leasing them to farmers. “Climate change could make a cornucopia out of land that was once frigid and unproductive.” Warmer temperatures have made Russia the world’s largest producer of wheat.

As events increase in frequency and severity, not only is crop productivity moving, people are also  moving. A recent New York Times article reports what its author calls America’s Great Climate Migration Era. The article cites Paradise, California’s buy out program for fire hazard zones, and Alaskan coastal communities planning to relocate after buildings fell into the sea.

A Conservation Coalition poll taken in October 2020 found approval of the government taking steps to reduce emissions at 94% among Democratic respondents and 76% among Republican respondents. However, despite natural disasters and crop and population migration, legislators at the national level have yet to produce a meaningful carbon reduction bill.