I'll add a thought about what also might be driving this. I think many of the people moving into these areas are older and moving into their retirement years. I think that they simply don't think that these risks are going to happen during their lifetimes. So many of the predictions of risk talk about 2050, or beyond. None of these people expect to be alive then. So I believe they are deaf when it comes to these warnings. Messaging that will make a difference to these folks needs to focus on the nex five to 10 years.
I suspect it's more simply screening it out because it doesn't seem relevant, because they'll be able to live well enough in those places until they die. I would guess that they don't see that what they're doing is feeding the problem of climate change, and I also would guess that they, like many people, feel powerles about affecting climate change.
Ah, I see. I get it so they too know and can feel that the crisis is very large and beyond their control so right now it’s more realistic to live out their days under less stress and dread.
I honestly wish we lived in a magical reality where we can just wave a wand and erase all our environment degradations 😂. But alas, we actually have to BE and live more ethically and mindfully with nature and society since we’re at this point now.
Yes, that's what I think is going on. Just my hypothesis based on anecdotal conversations with a range of people in my conversations about various futures and my understanding of human behavior.
I wished we lived in that magical reality, too, by the way--I used to keep a magic wand in my therapy office and would explain wistfully that it was broken 🙃.
And a whole-hearted yes to living mindfully and ethically with our environment and society.
Agree completely! It’s like cartoon characters who are walking into buzzsaws or off cliffs--I want to scream, “WTF is wrong with you?”
Watching the same people deny Covid taught me a lesson, though. Some people are really good at denial/pretend and some of us prefer to live in the real world. I don’t know any other explanation for it.
My father is from an old Florida family & he was born and raised in Florida himself. He left the state before I was born for personal reasons. He grasped the threat of sea level rise decades ago and has sold all of his inherited property except for a few low-market-value lots which are difficult to sell. A climate change-denying cousin delayed the sale of a co-owned property, but eventually she consented so she could get money too.
He's baffled that so many people fail the understand the danger climate change poses to Florida. I think he may be in less denial because in his childhood, only the rich had air-conditioning (and his parents weren't rich). His earliest memory is of a flood. He remembers the wildfires too, and as a teenager he needed medical care due to a wildfire-smoke-induced injury. He remembers when coconuts were abundant, and then a blight killed them all. He grew up hearing stories about how his father (my grandfather) survived the Depression by fishing to put food directly on the table, and the fish stocks my grandfather depended on are gone, no longer a food source for people living on the economic edge. In other words, my father remembers when Florida had less infrastructure and its residents were more obviously at Mother Nature's mercy.
Believe this inexplicable migration is from conservatives wanting to live in “red states.” They like how DeSantis and Abbot are running Florida and Texas. Since most don’t believe in climate change, they see no problem with this. They are also utterly blind to all the evidence that maybe these states are not where you want to be moving.
I happen to fall into the retiree cohort (though not actually retired) and live in western Washington but Arizona has been our primary vacation spot for decades, in particular the foothills NE of Scottsdale - not too far from Rio Verde, actually, the current poster child for a town which has run out of water. We don't golf but there's good hiking, though never after April or before October.
A lot of the houses in these areas are second/vacation homes for snowbirds - the Cleveland and Mayo clinics have major presences which tells a lot. We've assessed the possibility of buying too over the years and it has never seemd like a smart move, and as current retiree house owners die off/become too enfeebled to travel short-term rentals are opening up even more.
On the younger side there seem to be a lot of financial, healthcare, hospitality back-office operations still moving in, quite possibly because the lower-senior- level execs who head them up like being near all the golf. (I'm serious.) They don't require a lot of water (golf courses aren't actually that bad as water hogs go) but do require a lot of power (AC especially). But this is also the sort of operation that can be shut down and moved pretty quickly, not like an industrial plant, so it's not a long-term commitment for the companies or their execs. For their employees maybe another story.
I tend to compare this to e.g. Pompeii: Volcanic soils are very rich and you can have a lot of good growing seasons before the lava comes. When the mountain does blow it's relatively localized and regionally most people survive. From a regional population POV the risk is therefore pretty low compared to the benefits; a relative few are sacrificed (maybe even a small city or two) but the overall population is better off from using the land before and after the eruption. I think this is kind of a civilizational norm for thinking about disaster, if not articulated as such.
But this only makes sense for disasters that affect relatively small limited portions of a region. Climate change is not that. But we aren't used to thinking that way, individually and certainly not collectively.
Excellent piece, thank you!
I'll add a thought about what also might be driving this. I think many of the people moving into these areas are older and moving into their retirement years. I think that they simply don't think that these risks are going to happen during their lifetimes. So many of the predictions of risk talk about 2050, or beyond. None of these people expect to be alive then. So I believe they are deaf when it comes to these warnings. Messaging that will make a difference to these folks needs to focus on the nex five to 10 years.
Oh my goodness... so they’re basically saying “who cares cause I’ll be long gone from here”? Very selfish.
I suspect it's more simply screening it out because it doesn't seem relevant, because they'll be able to live well enough in those places until they die. I would guess that they don't see that what they're doing is feeding the problem of climate change, and I also would guess that they, like many people, feel powerles about affecting climate change.
Ah, I see. I get it so they too know and can feel that the crisis is very large and beyond their control so right now it’s more realistic to live out their days under less stress and dread.
I honestly wish we lived in a magical reality where we can just wave a wand and erase all our environment degradations 😂. But alas, we actually have to BE and live more ethically and mindfully with nature and society since we’re at this point now.
Yes, that's what I think is going on. Just my hypothesis based on anecdotal conversations with a range of people in my conversations about various futures and my understanding of human behavior.
I wished we lived in that magical reality, too, by the way--I used to keep a magic wand in my therapy office and would explain wistfully that it was broken 🙃.
And a whole-hearted yes to living mindfully and ethically with our environment and society.
Agree completely! It’s like cartoon characters who are walking into buzzsaws or off cliffs--I want to scream, “WTF is wrong with you?”
Watching the same people deny Covid taught me a lesson, though. Some people are really good at denial/pretend and some of us prefer to live in the real world. I don’t know any other explanation for it.
Anyway, terrific piece, thanks for this!
Thanks! Yes, denial is an extremely powerful thing
My father is from an old Florida family & he was born and raised in Florida himself. He left the state before I was born for personal reasons. He grasped the threat of sea level rise decades ago and has sold all of his inherited property except for a few low-market-value lots which are difficult to sell. A climate change-denying cousin delayed the sale of a co-owned property, but eventually she consented so she could get money too.
He's baffled that so many people fail the understand the danger climate change poses to Florida. I think he may be in less denial because in his childhood, only the rich had air-conditioning (and his parents weren't rich). His earliest memory is of a flood. He remembers the wildfires too, and as a teenager he needed medical care due to a wildfire-smoke-induced injury. He remembers when coconuts were abundant, and then a blight killed them all. He grew up hearing stories about how his father (my grandfather) survived the Depression by fishing to put food directly on the table, and the fish stocks my grandfather depended on are gone, no longer a food source for people living on the economic edge. In other words, my father remembers when Florida had less infrastructure and its residents were more obviously at Mother Nature's mercy.
Believe this inexplicable migration is from conservatives wanting to live in “red states.” They like how DeSantis and Abbot are running Florida and Texas. Since most don’t believe in climate change, they see no problem with this. They are also utterly blind to all the evidence that maybe these states are not where you want to be moving.
I’d be interested to learn which states make the most sense to migrate to if you’re looking to minimize exposure to climate change impacts.
I happen to fall into the retiree cohort (though not actually retired) and live in western Washington but Arizona has been our primary vacation spot for decades, in particular the foothills NE of Scottsdale - not too far from Rio Verde, actually, the current poster child for a town which has run out of water. We don't golf but there's good hiking, though never after April or before October.
A lot of the houses in these areas are second/vacation homes for snowbirds - the Cleveland and Mayo clinics have major presences which tells a lot. We've assessed the possibility of buying too over the years and it has never seemd like a smart move, and as current retiree house owners die off/become too enfeebled to travel short-term rentals are opening up even more.
On the younger side there seem to be a lot of financial, healthcare, hospitality back-office operations still moving in, quite possibly because the lower-senior- level execs who head them up like being near all the golf. (I'm serious.) They don't require a lot of water (golf courses aren't actually that bad as water hogs go) but do require a lot of power (AC especially). But this is also the sort of operation that can be shut down and moved pretty quickly, not like an industrial plant, so it's not a long-term commitment for the companies or their execs. For their employees maybe another story.
I tend to compare this to e.g. Pompeii: Volcanic soils are very rich and you can have a lot of good growing seasons before the lava comes. When the mountain does blow it's relatively localized and regionally most people survive. From a regional population POV the risk is therefore pretty low compared to the benefits; a relative few are sacrificed (maybe even a small city or two) but the overall population is better off from using the land before and after the eruption. I think this is kind of a civilizational norm for thinking about disaster, if not articulated as such.
But this only makes sense for disasters that affect relatively small limited portions of a region. Climate change is not that. But we aren't used to thinking that way, individually and certainly not collectively.