And even if it doesn’t their electric bills wil go thru the roof.
Full “aye” to the title question here, partially on just those grounds. [from NE Florida to N Ohio on Lake Erie] My bills last summer indeed went thru the roof, and I simply didn’t want to endure just such another summer, as well as risk a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane or even a 6 (which some climate experts are suggesting should be added to the S-S Scale). I am back in FL right now as it turns out, and we’ll apparently hit yet another record high here next week (2 days after I plan to leave).
I’m a skier. I grew up skiing in the Berkshires of Massachusetts where ski season started typically in mid October. Now even central Vermont struggles to open a month later and the Berkshires are very lucky to open on Thanksgiving, and more typically open mid December with at least one year in the past 10 in January. Yes I have moved north, but only a bit. I do feel another move further may be needed.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. We just got a notice that our water bill will triple starting the first on 2025. The water is there if you can afford it.
I have heard that a high percentage of water usage is for crops that need a lot of irrigation, but I really doubt the huge and growing cities in the desert will continue to have all the water for people that is needed, let alone wanted but would be very interested to know the timeline. @snowthx please consider that the topic “is the SW running out of water” deserves it’s own thread. I want to focus on migration.
In the book I was horrified to read about what is going on in Central America (one Guatemalan farmer’s family tragedy is detailed) and the author points out southern US cities are going to face migration from further south.
this was also put better than my OP did:
> Lustgarten’s central argument is that home insurance companies and government subsidies are perversely masking risks in threatened areas, making migration overdue, as many people aren’t aware of the extent of worsening climate impacts that surround their neighborhoods. The effect of such programs is “a gross misrepresentation of the true cost to the public,” he writes, and “the result is that the number of Americans incentivized to live in environmentally unstable places is a lot closer to one in two.”
I donno. My wife and I plan to move in a few years when we retire. We live way up in the mountains and the snow is going to be too much for us. But more importantly, as we age, there will be days, weeks where we will not have access to EMS.
But who knows. Are we going to get more snow or less? It’s May, and I still need to lock in 4x4 to get up our driveway. And I plow it. We have maybe 3 months out of the year that we can sit outside on our deck. June, July, August. We have about 3 sunny days this week, but will get more snow next week.
When we chose to move from California (Silicon Valley) to Washington (Kitsap), it was for personal and economic reasons, not environmental ones. However, I figured the PNW would likely be a “winner” as climate change progressed.
It’s coming up on ten years, now. The northwest grey and drizzle, familiar from my Oregonian childhood, is slowly being encroached upon by more Californian weather like heat waves and atmospheric rivers.
After 41 years in The Phoenix area, I said “no more summers!” last year.
We bought a summer house in the mountains of southern Colorado. A pokey little place that needs a bunch of work, but is otherwise in a fantastic location, with everything I think we will need within walking distance. I hope to go up next week to get it ready to move into for the summer.
We owned a condo in Florida until last year; when it was no longer needed (FIL died, MIL moved to assisted living) it occurred to me that we could have afforded to retire right then if we moved ourselves in.
But between it being in Florida (politics), being in Florida (substantially aging population), and being in Florida (climate change), we rejected that idea pretty quickly.
I talk about moving north when we retire. Dunno if we will do so, as there are a lot of logistical concerns (the more affordable areas leave a lot to be desired in terms of medical care, transportation and shopping), not to mention we’d go somewhere with no family nearby.
But it’s not entirely a joke, either. Cold weather doesn’t bother me (my in-laws moved to Florida because it DID bother them). And I’d deal with it the same way people in Florida deal with the heat: stay indoors, and use climate control in the house and in the car.
If we suddenly came into money, I would seriously think about getting a place in Vermont or New Hampshire right now.
Excellent point. You can hire someone to do the plowing when you’re unable to, but in some areas that might not occur in enough time. And EMS access is a very valid concern. I had a medical emergency, in December 2009 (the year where we had blizzard after blizzard), and had I needed to go to the hospital, I’d have likely had to struggle out to the main road (which had been plowed) for an ambulance to get to me. As it happens, that wouldn’t have been all THAT far, and I was somewhat ambulatory - but a heart attack or something and I’d have been very, very unlucky.
If you are somewhere that can take days for the plows to reach, yeah… not ideal.
If we moved north, we’d be in or quite near some kind of town.
If not for climate change I might have considered to a warmer place when I retired. But here in Montreal, summer heat is not much of a problem. Before we moved to a condo with A/C we had lived without it for 51 years and we didn’t even use it much last summer. This past winter has seen considerably less snow than normal, which could augur ill for the hydro power if was the same up north.
I’m not going anywhere. While climate change is a curse globally and pretty much everywhere, here in south-central Ontario its effects are minimal and sometimes beneficial. For the past 15 years or so winters have been noticeably milder with much less snow, and summers not particularly hotter than usual. Crop seasons run longer, and wine country here has been producing more and better wines, although they worry about the effects of climate change on pest migration.
So it’s a mixed bag here, but that’s about as good as it gets anywhere. Far up north, where bitter cold is the usual problem, the new problem is environmental destruction from thawing permafrost and coastal erosion.
You might find this Daily Show segment with Michael Costas in Duluth Minnesota interesting, discussing climate change and someone who moved there because of it. He had fun slipping and sliding in the snow, asking “Why?” We have a house there (we rent it out) and its value keeps increasing, but we are looking at finally installing air conditioning there.
Have had plans to move a bit further north in retirement for some time now. Didn’t pick the location because of climate change, but it’s a place that should remain livable for the rest of my life. I definitely will not be moving to anywhere hotter or near the ocean.
We live almost in Silicon Valley and had planned to move to the PNW when we retired. But it looks like everything we want to escape (heat, wildfire smoke) is to be found up there now, too, albeit in lesser quantities. Add in that we wouldn’t be a good fit politically up there and the cost of the move, and we finally decided to stay put.
I hate summers and heat, and it doesn’t look like I can escape them while I’m on this side of the dirt.
Or when you’re recovering from a hip replacement, and do decide to hire someone for the season, you have to pull the dumb ass out 4 times with your own plow truck.
