Too little, too late: that's our current trajectory.
American CO2 emissions may have peaked in 2007, but we're still creating 17.5% of the world's total. Meanwhile, China's and India's emissions are growing. Even if our gridlocked efforts improve, they will be meager compared to what is needed to limit the global temperature rise to 3.6 degF (2 degC, the threshold scientists warn about crossing). So we're on a path to cross that threshold: what happens next?
You heard about NASA's prediction of a mega-drought in the American Southwest and Great Plains regions, starting around 2050? Those kinds of headlines - paired with experience and water shortages - are going to start climate migration. People are not going to wait for 2050 to start moving out of the region. It might take 10 years from now to gain critical mass, but it might even start right now, today.
At first it's going to be Daily Kos readers and people with family in Seattle - and Milwaukee - and Buffalo. The slow trickle of early birds will drain population from desert towns, and then the property values will start to sag as buyers leave the region for water and cooler climates. These economic facts will start to alarm the locals, creating a positive feedback loop that accelerates climate flight, and then pow: you've got a migration crisis. As property values crash and people abandon the Southwest - that will motivate politicians to respond.
The immediate response will probably aim to placate a few influential people and save their investments. It will waste more money trying to forestall the outcome, but then those expenditures will be abandoned as the futility of stopping the northern migration becomes apparent. This will create major policy dilemmas for politicians about whether or not to provide relief for the beleaguered states and homeowners, but its own capabilities will be severely limited by the burden of debt that it carries from the excesses of the babyboomer borrowing.
In short, whatever actions to address climate change are made in the near future, they will be largely inadequate until we see climate migration out of the desert Southwest. A lot of people will lose everything, like in the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression. The early actors will be able to transition without a major loss of wealth, but the overall trend will drive up property values in the North and increase the cost of transitioning. We might see mining companies and oil & gas developers sweep in to take advantage of the collapsing southwestern economy, snatching up mineral rights and providing jobs and income for people that have no other choice. Maybe that continues through the drought for a skeletal desert workforce - or maybe the absence of water becomes too big an obstacle for even them to surmount.
The good news of this reality is that we can start this transition now. The sooner we start this migration, the sooner our society will take notice with an improved response. It also behooves individuals to act quickly - before the costs rise in the wake of the early migrants. I count myself among those migrants, because I live in an alpine desert. I'm already making my own climate migration plan, identifying criteria for a new home that will be resilient in a drier, hotter future, but one that has opportunity in my industry at the present.
I realize that by writing about this now, I might accelerate the migration ahead of my own schedule - and suffer the consequences. That's the point, though. I'd rather instill some healthy fear and accelerate our response than slink off and watch the ignorance continue. That's what we want at this point: a real estate panic will actually be good for us. When we see that, we might finally get some collective action on this problem.
