Climate change is disrupting our sense of home

Climate change is personal. It’s not abstract. Climate warming affects our economy, affects our politics and culture, threatens the food we eat and the water we drink; it even affects our love lives.

As climate change accelerates, with extreme heat and climate disasters displacing more and more people around the world, the crisis is increasingly disrupting our fundamental sense of belonging and home.

We saw this last summer in Maui, Hawaii, when the worst wildfires in the United States in more than a century razed the historic town of Lahaina, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands of residents.

After the disaster, many families took refuge in hotels and resorts on the edge of the burn zone, only to be displaced again months later when tourists returned to the city. Nearly a year has passed since the devastating fires, but the recovery comes amid an ongoing housing crisis, with many Maui residents still without stable housing.

Millions of others have experienced the same thing over the past two decades. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, an average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced each year since 2008 due to weather-related events such as floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures.

Each of these statistics is a man, woman or child whose life has been destroyed, who has lost their home, family and friends. U.N. Commissioner Filippo Grandi said in late October that it may be time to say goodbye forever to relatives who are too old or sick to make the long journey to safer locations.

These numbers are only expected to increase. The Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank, said that by 2050, as many as 1.2 billion people around the world may be displaced by climate change and natural disasters.

The World Bank estimates that by 2050, climate change will displace more than 140 million people within their own countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. month’s time.

Mohamed Abdi, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director for Somalia, told UNHCR that the figures were shocking as some of the most vulnerable people were forced to abandon everything they owned and travel to places unknown.

Around the world, the climate crisis is destroying our connections to place and our sense of home.

All of our lives are intertwined with the natural world, but the impacts of climate change are not felt equally

Currently, extreme drought has gripped much of southern Africa. More than 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe face food shortages and many families are going hungry, according to the region’s aid group. According to the Associated Press, the ongoing drought has burned the crops that tens of millions of people grow and depend on for their own livelihoods, which are helped by the rainy season. They are less and less dependent on crops and weather.

Drought in southern Africa has affected Botswana, Angola, Cambia and Malawi, with Cyclone Freddy in 2023 displacing thousands of people in the small country.

These successive crises highlight the stark contrast between people on the front lines of countries most vulnerable to rising sea levels, climate catastrophes and displacement, and those who move for amenities such as sunny days and warm winters. Particularly in the United States, there’s a lot of sun-kissed magical thinking that continues to drive people’s search for ideal homes and climates, while betting on climate change and the possibility of access to water.

A few years ago, the fastest-growing region in the United States was Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, a desert metropolis that averages more than 110 days a year with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Maricopa County reported 645 heat-related deaths in 2023, a 700% increase from a decade ago. These losses disproportionately affect low-income families, communities of color, and workers whose employers have inadequate protections.

Although things could be worse, Maricopa’s population has increased 14 percent in the past 10 years, to nearly 4.5 million people. You see similar trends in Florida, where many people are moving to areas vulnerable to hurricanes, rising sea levels and flooding, or in the American West, where much of the U.S. faces extreme wildfire risk.

Nearly half of Americans planning to move said natural disasters were a factor in their decision, and 27% said recent natural disasters like floods or wildfires made them reconsider their plans, according to real estate website Redfin place to live.

But love for a place can trump even the most eye-popping statistics.

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My colleague Bryan Walsh reported at the time on a previous Redfin analysis that found that the 50 U.S. counties with the largest shares of homes facing high climate and extreme weather risks all experienced positive weather on average between 2016 and 2020. net migration.

I was born in Colorado in the late 1980s, and much of my identity is inseparable from the place where I live in the American Southwest. Since my hometown’s lifestyle provides me with a daily routine of regularly getting out into nature, stretching, and hiking, I accept the trade-offs: frequent wildfire smoke, drought, and heat. I am a person of this place and a part of this place. I’m very happy here. I have a community here. I’m connected here. This is my home.

However, climate change has begun to disrupt these connections: our winters are changing, with less snow on average; our summers are plagued by triple-digit heat, and our midcentury neighborhoods are filled with homes without air conditioning ( Including my house).

The frequency of heat waves is expected to increase tenfold by the mid-21st century, according to a recent report from the Colorado Climate Center. Wildfires are expected to be more severe and occur more frequently, even during winter and spring. Some 40 million people, including me, rely on the Colorado River for drinking water, hydropower and agriculture, but it still suffered from a 1,200-year drought.

I’m reminded of a story Carly Caswell wrote a few years ago, in which she wrote about Santa Fe, New Mexico, a city she loved and a city where she convinced her family to put down roots. But she began to worry that she was choosing a place that didn’t take into account the details of the future. What are the chances that this place will become deserted? how long? Is there any way we can live with it? Perhaps most striking of all: what are we doing here?

These are deeply personal questions about the future. what are we going to do? Should we stay? Where can we go?

While the climate crisis exacerbates inequality and hits some communities harder than others, this concept of fractured families is a unifier. No matter where you are, relative pain is destabilizing. No matter where we are on Earth, we are uneasy, but we are united.

Climate change also causes literal and emotional displacement.

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