Introduction to the project

[next_migration]

Welcome to my new blog! Perhaps its title has made you wonder what it’s about. Its purpose is to acknowledge that some parts of the United States are rapidly approaching systemic collapse, and to encourage residents of those areas to move while they can do so in relative safety; indeed, to start a campaign to inspire people to do so in large numbers. I will discuss why you should consider this action in the very near term, suggest a varied selection of potential destinations—with both reader feedback and additional suggestions very welcome—and give some advice on how to do it successfully. There’s a lot to get out here, so I’ll do my best to post frequently.

 

The basic assumption of this work is that, not only is industrial civilization on the brink of a serious overall decline, but climate change will render life as we know it impossible in certain parts of the U.S. quite soon, and the broader systemic problems of our society will prevent any response on the scale that would be necessary to prevent that. Dissident voices have been warning for decades of the risks of climate change and the unsustainability of an economic system that requires endless increases in consumption, and have been largely ignored. Now, the crises are almost upon us.

Worrying about future crises seems like an unaffordable luxury for many Americans, who are isolated, stressed, and living paycheck to paycheck. Indeed, many people in that position fiercely defend the status quo, understandably fearing that any attempt to change it might leave them even worse off. Almost all of us are caught in consumption traps, too. Even if we know that our car-centric culture is unsustainable and wrecking the climate, if we can’t keep a job or visit loved ones without a car, we will keep paying for that car. Then we need the job to support the car, as well as the car to support the job. Climate change means we suffer more from the heat, so we use more air conditioning, which worsens climate change. And so forth.

There is a powerful inertia in any society. If what we are doing is allowing us to get by well enough, we want and expect to keep doing things that way for as long as possible, preferably forever. Making big changes means risk, sacrifices, discomfort, or conflict with other people who like things the way they are. Who needs that? So, we think we will only change if things really get bad enough to force us to.

The trouble is that when we see that we are being forced to change, it might be too late to avoid personal catastrophe. At best, the changes required will be much harder. If you plan to give up soda and cigarettes and start walking only if and when you actually have a heart attack, for example, then you run the risk that if you do, that first one will kill you. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll probably never achieve the level of health you might have enjoyed if you’d started doing those things twenty or even five years earlier.

There’s a difference between the personal-health example and our current predicament, though. If a doctor threatens that you’ll certainly have a heart attack if you don’t change your lifestyle (or, more likely, if you don’t go on pills for life), he’s lying. The odds may be ugly, but some people always beat them and live happily to extreme old age, on the couch smoking cigarettes and swilling rum and Coke. But in the coming years, the unsustainability of our economic arrangements plus increasing climate change will disrupt the global economy and make life harder for people in the areas worst hit. Some specific places will be badly affected. It’s effectively 100% certain that these things will happen.

In fact, they’re already happening now. Last year, several hundred people were killed by an apocalyptic heat wave and firestorm in the Pacific Northwest, and hundreds more by flooding in areas around the world that got a normal year’s rainfall in a few days. This year, we’re watching one surprise after another emerge from the shrinking water of Lake Mead; before too long, the next thing to appear could be the lowest intake pipe. We’ve assumed that even if the beautiful place we live in really will become a desert or a piece of seafloor, that would happen centuries from now, or at least several decades from now—so, not really our problem, right? Tough luck for the grandkids! But some areas may not have decades before their ability to maintain the minimal infrastructure of civilization is degraded over large areas. They may only have a few years—if that.

Future crises may drive large numbers of people out of the most vulnerable areas. People might be forced to leave because a hurricane, wildfire, or flood destroys their neighborhood, and the resources to support victims and rebuild don’t exist or aren’t made available. New Orleans was never fully rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. As more such events occur, governments and insurance companies will provide less assistance after each. People may feel forced to move because of unreliable supplies of water or other utilities, or weather extremes that existing housing stock wasn’t designed to help people survive, or just the loss of available employment as things fall apart.

These will be occasions of misery at best. Imagine moving yourself or your family to a distant state not because you want to or you’ve taken a great new job, but because the situation at home has become completely intolerable. Maybe you’ve lost everything you own in a flood or fire, or maybe you’re moving in your car because you don’t have enough savings to rent an apartment, so you know that at best you’ll be living in a motel somewhere. And what if you don’t have a car?

The history of forced migration even within the United States is not a pretty one. Many of us are aware of our hostile exclusion of today’s foreign climate migrants and the camps they are herded into in European countries. Fewer know that when largely white American refugees from the manmade environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl entered California, they encountered not only monstrously exploitative employers, but brutal, semi-militarized police at the border and miserable refugee camps. We prefer not to remember that after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, white supremacist law officers in multiple places shot at, and even killed, African-American survivors trying to escape the flooded city across elevated bridges. People who are fleeing a disaster, going wherever or as far as they can manage to go, without savings or a job or home at their destination, are incredibly vulnerable.

Today, Americans coming from coastal states are already demonized in certain circles. In harder times, the temptation to demonize and criminalize jobless and homeless people from disliked states will be greater than ever, as impoverished outsiders would be seen as a drain on limited resources (“our tax dollars”). Government does not do a great job of protecting Americans from hate crimes now. In future, it may have even less power to do so, or it may not wish to try. Anything you can do to avoid having to travel as a refugee through communities and regions harboring many people who would hate you is to your benefit.

In this work, I will propose that as many individuals as possible alter their life plans to enable them to take part in a managed retreat from certain clearly overpopulated and unsustainable areas. These include, especially, large urban areas in deserts, future deserts (i.e., most of the southwestern U.S.), and low-lying coastal areas, particularly those that will lack sufficient regional ecosystem services to supply those cities’ basic needs, or that face high risks of being overwhelmed by fire or flood. In the long run, as we will see, most of these regions are unsustainable in their present form. They have to decline in population or at least consumption, because it will be physically impossible for them to keep growing, no matter what is done to try to prop them up. Some of these areas are at graver short-term risk than others, but the younger you are now, the more likely it is that if you remain in any of them, you will face severely unpleasant or unlivable conditions in future.

Of course, if everyone could follow my advice and did so at once, it would create the feared state of mass unemployment and homelessness. The millions of residents of Las Vegas can’t all pack up and move to La Crosse, say, or any other better-positioned city or town, at the same time. But that’s not going to happen. The most that could possibly happen as a result of efforts to create an organized early movement of voluntary migration is that a greater number of people begin, one by one, moving out of the areas of greatest risk. If they take my advice, they won’t all move to the same place; a few more here and there in each of many destination communities, over a period of years, gives time for local housing and industry to adapt to the extra people.

Equally important, anyone who’s now living in relatively sustainable regions can vow not to be lured into the more-threatened areas by a nice job or retirement community. The huge urban areas in drought, fire, and flood zones are expanding not only by births, but because people keep moving there. If people stop moving in, the size and impact of future crises will be reduced a little—and, at least, anyone who doesn’t move into those areas won’t be affected by those crises. These climate red zones have been gaining population because they have been considered more desirable, usually for good reasons, such as high-paying jobs, cultural diversity, warm weather, and attractive scenery. However, I hope to persuade you that those criteria are no longer the best ones to use in choosing a home, and moreover, that your quality of life could be even better in a place currently perceived as less desirable.

The outline of this work is as follows. First, I will very briefly review the layers of cascading problems our country is facing. I will assume that you already are aware of climate change, so will not take the space to try to explain the evidence of its reality (and anyone who wishes to argue this point will be invited to leave). Rather, I will only touch on the most important general predictions of its effects.

Next, I will address the political conditions in the United States. Though the electorate has been equally polarized in the past (sometimes without a civil war following), we see increasingly extreme polarization regarding the essential issue of whether government should be democratic or authoritarian, coupled with increases in hostile propaganda and even calls for mass murder. America has become a semi-democracy at grave risk of civil war. I will argue that the formal or effective breakup of the U.S. into several smaller successor nations is a possible, perhaps even desirable consequence of these crises. I will therefore suggest that migrants, especially younger people and those with children, should prioritize the likely future regional, but not local, political climate in selecting a home.

I will review the specific areas of the United States that are least sustainable and most overpopulated for the future. If you live in one of the most at-risk areas, I will strongly encourage you to consider moving to one of the more sustainable regions if you are able to do so. We will explore how you can identify the region where you might best live, based on economic, ecological and political issues, then use currently available resources to find towns that might suit you. Since most people likely to be migrating in the near future will be urban residents, I hope to convince urbanites that most of them have many possible destinations that would offer a better quality of life, if approached correctly, than an increasingly threatened and dysfunctional major city. If each person moving to a given region chooses among the many potential destination towns and cities using personal or idiosyncratic criteria, the problem of excessive influx into a few places, causing worsened employment and housing situations and local resentment, will be minimized. I discuss some criteria for selecting preferred destinations, and explain why local political climate should be de-emphasized, though not discarded altogether.

I will first focus on migration to the northeastern portion of the United States and states peripheral to the Northeast, where most proactive, voluntary climate migrants should probably prefer to go. I am a strong believer in secular, multiracial democracy, and this is the region where there is by far the greatest hope of preserving it. I will, however, also evaluate states in the Southeast, the best destination for those who prefer right-wing, religiously influenced government. For each potential destination state I will set up a post that suggests some specific towns, cities, or regions in each that appear to be worth considering as new homes, depending upon individual circumstances. Readers of this blog will be encouraged to contribute based on their own knowledge.

I also plan to cover some discussion of financial and economic issues, including housing choices; affording a move; potentially beneficial options for employment and education; and decisions to be made by the retired or those nearing retirement. I’ll wrap up with some comments on building community, including how to fit into a new community, how to get along with people of the other political faction, why you should help your friends and family move, and why you should buy a gun and shoot your TV. Eventually, I will wrap up with some discussions of economic issues, including housing, employment and education, and retirement, and social issues relating to the transition to a different type of community.

These blog posts are based on my book, which is now available as a free PDF on Internet Archive and as a Kindle text and paperback through Amazon for anyone who prefers those formats. (At least, you can now check out the PDF version to see if you like it before paying for it.) All texts posted here may be reprinted for noncommercial use under the Creative Commons license terms CC BY-NC-ND if you provide a link to the original source.

I have been researching this issue for quite some time so am more knowledgeable than your average bear, but do not claim to be an Expert, merely a fellow citizen giving a personal opinion. Feedback is highly welcome. Those who disagree with my views are welcome to do so civilly. However, I won’t allow the comment section to play host to factional disputes, and no expressions of bigotry of any kind will be allowed. We are facing a very difficult time in the coming years, and learning how to treat one another as human beings again is perhaps one of the few things we can do to mitigate the coming disaster. Thanks very much for contributing to that goal!