PBS Terra examines 'The Real Reason People Move Toward Risk'

I observed a recurring theme in PBS Terra asks 'When Will We Stop Moving to the Riskiest Regions?'

The Cascadia Megaquake and Tsunami isn't the only topic PBS Terra likes to re-examine periodically. Another is THE RISKIEST Places to Live in the US as Our Climate Changes'.

Maiya May and the Weathered crew at PBS Terra returned to the topic in The Real Reason People Move Toward Risk.

Some of the fastest-growing metros in the U.S. are also the riskiest when it comes to climate change. And we’ve long puzzled: WHY? In this episode, we explore how the Great Recession, liberal housing policy and well-intentioned community decision-making have fueled our nationwide housing crisis and helped drive people to move into harm’s way.

We’ll dive into new First Street maps that unveil where people will be living - and fleeing - as the climate warms. So stay tuned to see if your home is on the map, and what we can do to build more resilient communities for the future.

I begin my response by recycling what I wrote in January.

I wrote "I just wish that the economics were such that people would move here instead of into harm's way. That would make a great subject for another post" two years ago in PBS Terra asks 'What is the RISKIEST Region in the US as the Climate Changes?' In the case of Louisiana, which 'Weathered: Earth's Extremes' asks 'What Happens When the Land Runs Out?' covered, the answer is a combination of low income and high cost. As long as people are making money, they will continue moving into and living in high-risk states like Florida and Texas, although Miami-Dade County is starting to lose population. That looks like a good story for another day.

Today is that day.

A factor this video examined is that a lot of the safer states and municipalities, although California is both high-cost and high-risk, have made it difficult to build housing, while many high-risk states, like Arizona, Texas, and Florida, allow quicker, easier, and cheaper construction. The combination of more economic opportunity and cheaper housing will drive people to move to high-climate-risk states despite the threat of droughts, fires, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and tornadoes. What might stop that trend are higher insurance costs, which has already started to drive people out of Louisiana and might be a factor in California and Florida, and the weakening of FEMA as a backstop to insurance. Losing those supports might change the economic equation surprisingly quickly.

The most encouraging aspect of the First Street study May cited involves climate resilience. The map below shows the places First Street considered to be climate resilient.


I've outlined and labeled the parts of Michigan considered to be climate resilient. From west to east, they are Grand Rapids and its western suburbs, Kalamazoo, Mount Pleasant, Lansing and East Lansing, Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti, and the northern suburbs of Detroit — Livingston, Oakland, and Macomb counties. This fits what I told my environmental science students on Monday, that Michigan is the safest state in the U.S. for natural disasters and Oakland County is the best-prepared county in the state. It also fits what I wrote in MLive asks 'Michigan is a climate haven in a warming world. Will everyone move here?' and repeated in FiveThirtyEight examines 'How Climate Change Will Reshape Where Americans Live'.

I'm in favor of getting people to move here, both because it's a safer place to live (but not immune from the extreme weather associated with climate change as the second video mentioned) and because the state has room. Detroit alone lost more than one million people since its 1950 peak and other Michigan cities have lost people as well, so they alone could take up the slack — that is, if they can become better places to live and work. People moved out of Michigan to seek work, so state and local governments need to work with businesses to promote and create sustainable industries to employ the people who move here and rebuild infrastructure to support them in a warmer and, for Michigan, wetter world. Infrastructure and housing construction to accommodate people moving here will provide a lot of jobs by themselves, but that only lasts so long. Ask Las Vegas, for example.

This might happen sooner than many people expect, as the U.S. is warming faster than the global average, so Michigan and other climate havens need to be prepared for it.

This is another lesson I hope my students learn and that they spread.

Ray "CityNerd" Delahanty has his own videos on this topic, so stay tuned for a post featuring them later this month. In the meantime, I have continuing coverage of the News & Doc Emmy Awards and three holidays, Friday the 13th, Flag Day, and Father's Day, planned. I'm looking forward to them.