Adapt, Migrate, or Die

The US Dustbowl of the 1930s drove 2.5 million Americans from their farms and homes. The human suffering from that drought is burned into our history. In many parts of the world today people are being driven from their homes due to climate-change-caused drought, flooding, wildfires, and storms. Do we have a responsibility to help these climate migrants? Will we be the next wave of migrants as conditions deteriorate further?

Back in the 1930s it was all about drought. Now climate change is coming at us from every direction. As we put more heat energy into the climate system we are seeing more extremes of every kind. More intense and more frequent storms, floods, wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts, with headlines about Los Angeles wildfires, severe flooding in Central Texas, the Enderlin Tornado outbreak in North Dakota, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Beryl, South Fork Wildfires in New Mexico, Park Fire --the list is long, tragic, and growing fast.

Back in the 1930s, the Dustbowl occurred in the central US. Now climate phenomena are global and more extreme, with Cyclone Gezani in Africa, severe flooding in Spain, new heat records set in Australia, Asia, Africa, Antarctica, South America, North America, and Europe. Crop failures in Central America are leading to crisis-level hunger for 3 million in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

In the US and other industrialized countries, we may have more economic resilience, but even here we are starting to feel the pain with hundreds of billions in climate damages every year. FirstStreet insurance and real estate group estimates that we have already seen a $1.4 trillion loss in real estate value in the US due to added climate change damages and risks.

This hits us in many small and large ways. For example, my sister-in-law in La Habra, California is in a fix. Her insurance company raised her home insurance rate fourfold, to $5,000/year for a middle-class home. Other insurance companies, such as Allstate, Farmers, and State Farm are pulling out of California, Florida and Texas. Still others are simply raising rates. The trend is growing. Pay more or risk losing your home without insurance coverage. In some areas, including N. Arizona, getting insurance on a $150,000 home is impossible, re-building is risky, and getting a loan, improbable. Some residents are forced to flee, sometimes a few miles, sometimes thousands, to become climate migrants.

In 2014, my wife and I, on our small retiree farm of avocados and pomegranates in North San Diego County, were surrounded by nine fires in one day, fourteen fires in two weeks, under howling, scorching Santa Ana winds. One night, in the middle of these blazes, my wife caught sight of the flames dancing on the ridges nearby. Her frightened look told it all. We were both shaken and began our own migration back to her home turf of Scandinavia. Our fear would echo eleven years later when the Palisades and Eaton fires, driven by similar Santa Ana winds, destroyed churches, schools, businesses, and homes, and set an entire community in migratory flight.

The current migration is, however, not a wave of the past but a prelude to more severe migrations-in-the-making for decades to come. In 2018, the World Bank projected there would be 216 million long-term refugees every year by 2050. The Zurich Insurance Group projects there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.

If we are to stem this human suffering and slow this coming migration, we must focus our efforts on the underlying causes. Blaming the victims is not a solution. To send migrants back to unlivable conditions or ignore taking local or national measures will not fix the problem. The only option we have is to reduce our emissions and we know how to do that. Because our misguided leaders are encouraging massive leaps in fossil fuel emissions for years to come, the US is now the No. 1 global producer of LNG and oil. These leaders’ plans include gas exploration and pipelines in Africa, massive oil and gas extraction in Latin America, new gas developments off the coast of Gaza, tapping fossil fuels in Greenland–all led by the US government and the fossil fuel industrial complex.

Why bring the punishing trauma of migration upon ourselves and others? Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone if we fully embraced clean solar and wind power? These alternative energy sources are cheaper, job-creating, locally available, and migrant-reducing.

Rolf vom Dorp, US Citizen resident in Lund, Sweden

Works with Fridays for Future International, Peace and Climate Justice Groups, and member of the board of Northern Arizona Climate Change Alliance, www.NAZCCA.org/volunteer

A young man leaps over a flooded street in Florida, USA. CREDIT: Joe Raedle