Why the West must prepare for climate migration

The ruins of homes along the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Milton passed through the area in Manasota Key, Florida. Getty Images

The idea of climate migration in the western media conjures images of desperate Africans straggling across the desert, or Bangladeshis sitting on their rooftops amid flooded fields. But as hurricanes and wildfires tear through apparently safe locales, climate migration is a feature of life in the US and Europe, too – even if the West doesn’t realise it yet.

One of the great trends of 20th century American life was the population move to the Sun Belt states such as California, Arizona and Florida, aided by widespread air conditioning, from the drought-stricken Mid-West in the 1930s, and the decaying – and colder – northern rust-belt from the 1970s. John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath follows one family of “Okies” (migrant farm workers) fleeing their parched farm in Oklahoma’s Dust-Bowl for a better life in California – where they encounter prejudice and exploitation.

Two major hurricanes have just struck the US. Milton hit low-lying Florida, which is no stranger to such storms. Helene, though, reached mountainous areas of inland North Carolina, usually thought to be safe, bringing catastrophic flooding and landslides and killing at least 227 people.

Although the science is complex and debated, World Weather Attribution found that global warming made Milton’s winds 10 per cent more powerful, and the hurricane 20 to 30 per cent rainier, while Helene was about 10 per cent more intense on these measures. This is the general pattern to be expected from increased evaporation from hotter tropical seas where hurricanes are born. There will be more powerful storms, and they will intensify rapidly.

The effect of the hurricanes is magnified by sea-level rise because of expanding warmer seas and melting glaciers. The storm surge they bring approaches coastlines already retreating. The US East and Gulf Coasts are undergoing an above-average relative sea-level rise because of post-glacial subsidence, the damming of sediment-bearing rivers, and the extraction of subsurface water and oil.

The effects of global warming are being felt across North America and Europe. Heatwaves are hitting more northerly cities that are not equipped for them. Traditional tourist areas in southern Europe are becoming unbearably hot in summer.

A long drought in California might return as the Pacific shifts back to La Niña conditions this year. Wildfires burn homes, cut off power, and bring choking smoke to the south-western US, New York and other areas adjacent to Canadian forests, Greece and Australia. Heavy rains strain dams and overtop rivers across central Europe, France, England and Wales, while April’s floods in Dubai and Sharjah are fresh in the memory.

While Europe mostly worries about rising heat, it’s also possible that changes in oceanic circulation could plunge it into a deep freeze. That would make parts of the continent uninhabitable and decimate agriculture.

While Europe and the US have become increasingly hostile to immigration, climate change impact – such as storms and droughts forcing farmers off the land in Central America, and the effect of water shortages across weak states in the Middle East and Sahel – also influences migration patterns. A World Bank paper found that more than 200 million people in poorer countries might migrate by 2050 because of climate change.

These climatic troubles are particularly damaging because they occur in low-income, poorly-governed or oppressive states that cannot deal with them effectively. Wealthier countries may think they are relatively immune.

But the costs of climate-related natural disasters are huge – $225 billion to $250 billion for Hurricane Helene, according to estimates from forecaster AccuWeather. Most of this is not covered by insurance. Uninsured properties can’t easily be sold or mortgaged.

That is one powerful force for climate migration within the nation: properties by the coast or on floodplains will become increasingly impossible to insure, or the budgetary cost of government-backed insurance will become unaffordable. Rich and high-profile neighbourhoods will probably be able to attract government funds while poorer areas are sacrificed.

Wealthy countries can cope with many of the effects of a changing climate through improvements to flood defences, seawalls, dams, air-conditioning, drip irrigation, changing cultivation to less water-hungry plants, better forest management and firefighting. A large part of these costs will be invisible, but will pose an ever-increasing drag on productivity and economic growth.

Migration within the US is relatively straightforward. In the EU and European economic area, it is legally quite easy, but there are barriers of language, culture and personal networks. Brexit Britain has foolishly cut itself off from such flexibility.

But the accelerating flight of large numbers of people will worsen social tensions and have powerful and unpredictable political consequences. Over the past two decades, about 3.2 million people, or nearly 1 per cent of the American population, have already moved to escape flooding, a paper in Nature found. Big states such as California, Texas and Florida report population growth slowing as climatic risks deter residents.

The best approach, of course, is to limit global warming as far as possible. But with at least a rise of 2ºC now a near-certainty, authorities need to plan ahead. Efforts so far are piecemeal and conventional. North Carolina, a swing state in the upcoming US election, even introduced a law in 2011 banning the use of updated estimates of sea-level rise by state agencies in land-use decisions.

Migration within wealthy countries and areas because of climate change is already a reality. Rather than listening to anti-immigration campaigners rallying against hordes of incomers from poorer regions, wealthy countries such as the US and those in Europe need to prepare for their own internally-displaced people. That’s better than the social dislocation and political dysfunction that a new wave of 21st century Okies will bring.

Robin M Mills is chief executive of Qamar Energy, and author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis