Climate refugees are already on the move in the United States. The New York Times recently conducted an exploration on of the most desirable locations to escape wildfires, drought, and sea-level rise.
Debra Kamin shares insight into a recent exploration of the trend of Americans relocating to the Great Lakes Region, exemplified by the city of Duluth, Minnesota, to seek a friendlier climate as environmental risks increase in other parts of the country.
“The New York Times has been tracking the global climate migration for several years; four years ago, we covered a report from Jesse Keenan, then a professor at Harvard, zeroing in on a handful of U.S. cities that he believed would become climate havens in the coming years,” writes Kamin. “Many of those cities are in the cooler, landlocked Midwest. But it was Duluth, Minn., which Dr. Keenan nicknamed ‘climate-proof Duluth,’ that he believed would be one of the safest bets.”
The exploration produced an article published earlier in March, linked as the source article below. According to Kamin’s summary of the reportage, recent climate migrants to Duluth share a similar sentiment: “Nowhere on the globe is fully removed from climate change. But as wildfires become more intense and sea levels rise, Duluth might be manageable.”
Planetizen first picked up the news of “climate migrants’ moving to Duluth in October 2021.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research