America’s Next Great Migrations Are Driven by Climate Change

The increasingly frequent and intense floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme climate events jolt us into realizing that we don’t have the comfortable distance of 2040 or 2050 by which to mitigate climate change. The future we were meant to evade is here already, decades ahead of schedule. As world leaders gather at the global climate negotiations in Glasgow in November, they—and we—need to focus on two imperatives simultaneously. 

First, we must avoid the unmanageable by rapidly reducing the emissions that are heating up the planet. And second, we must manage the unavoidable by making ourselves more resilient to the changes that are already here or soon will be. And for billions of people, to adapt will mean to move. 

That applies to people in the United States as well. But the search for low taxes and sunshine have lured people to Phoenix, Austin and Miami, cities facing drought, power failure and rising seas, respectively. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco—many of America’s principal economic engines are threatened by accelerating climate change damages, from surging seas to wildfire smoke. 

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