On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America

Interesting book about how climate change is going to change the demographics of the US. I’ve been interested in this in the past:

• Here’s a blog post from 2010 when I argued that we just need to how we’re going to live with climate change: The Sad Truth About Climate Change
• Here’s an article about how we’re going to have to move due to climate change: The Great Climate Migration
• Here’s a video about the exact same thing: How Earth's Geography Will Change With Climate Change

This book doesn’t try to convince you that climate change is happening. And it doesn’t really tell you how to prevent it much, either.

The book tells you what’s happening, what will happen, and how we’re going to react to it. The wildfires in California and the flooding in Flordia are two sides of the same coin. And it’s getting harder and harder to rebuild in the same spot – insurance companies are bailing out, and humans are showing signs of stress disorders, worrying about if their house is going to burn down this year.

The bottom line is that we’ll move north, in general. The Great Lakes area, in particular, will become popular. But the book talks quite a bit about how this migration will be limited by socioeconomics, and, inevitably, about race and poverty.

Poor people will have problems moving. Their neighborhoods are being damaged more heavily – less trees, less infrastructure, and less money to run air conditioners. Etc.

It’s a sobering book, but it’s almost…refreshing? I think the time to stop climate change has passed. We’re beyond that tipping point.

Now we just have to live with what we’ve done. And this book lays out, in detail, what that’s going to look like. It was fascinating.