In the upcoming decades, as the U.S. (and rest of the world) gets hotter and hotter, it is possible that the migration of people from the north to the south will reverse (for the past half century, many people in blue states made their way south to Florida, Arizona, etc.) and we will instead see people migrating up north to get relief from heat.
Assuming that the northern U.S. still remains blue, then this could mean more and more people going from places like Texas, Arizona and Florida to places like Vermont, Washington State and Minnesota. While this might have the effect of diluting the blue vote, it would swell the population of the northern blue states and their Electoral College representation - thus making it easier and easier for Democrats to win and retain the White House.
The key assumptions that could go wrong, of course, are: 1) That heat will get so intense in the south that southerners will start moving up north, 2) that northern blue states will remain blue despite such migration, and 3) such migration will be of significant-enough numbers that it would increase the Electoral votes of northern blue states.
Yes, but I am guessing that just as many liberals (who live in the south) are going to flee north as well. In fact, they’d be arguably likelier to pull up roots and move to a cooler blue state than a conservative would.
But - even if they were mostly conservatives - I think there’s a good chance their red votes still wouldn’t overall sway the election, but their presence would have the effect of boosting that state’s population. You see this the other way around with Texas, for instance. A lot of Californians and New Yorkers have moved into Texas and boosted the state’s electoral votes but didn’t flip the state blue - thus handing the Republican presidential candidate an extra 3 EVs or so.
I am thinking that by 2050, we might see the opposite and New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, etc. each pick up 1-3 EVs.
That people will start fleeing deadly heat, tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides, wildfires, floods, and the other plagues that have recently hit southern states is the rational thought. I’d like to think that would be true myself, and by any normal standards we should already see signs of population shifts.
But we don’t, so I’m trying to figure out why. I’d say mostly economics. The reason that those Californians and New Yorkers moved to Texas and Florida is that those states don’t have income taxes and the general tax burden is lower. Of course that means the money the states spend on public services is also lower, but that balance is not reflected in their population growth.
Southern states also generally are anti-union. That holds down salaries but attracts companies. A huge percentage of everything from auto plants to chip manufacturers have chosen to build their huge facilities in the South. All kinds of support services from car washes to fast food outlets follow. People go to where the jobs are.
The population growth has strained governments, scrambling to keep up with demands for schools and fire fighters. But it also means that everything tends to be new. New houses, new stores, new libraries, new office buildings. The northeast has millions of houses and buildings erected after WWII, which means they are 50-70 years old and not nearly as attractive. Even though they are cheaper, nobody wants them at seemingly any price.
Trends like these and others are hard to defy. Why would people go to places with higher taxes, fewer jobs, and inferior amenities and cold weather to boot? People apparently hate cold weather and hate snow even more.
I don’t want to predict 25 years out. Maybe by 2050 the living conditions in the south will become so unbearable the pressure to move north by people and companies will be irresistible. But it will take a full generation even to start to turn around the massive changes wrought by the past two generations.
Political change is a lot faster than climate change (but just as dangerous). If the two can be connected at all it will be Southern states becoming more blue (or, at least more environmentally conscious) as climate change starts to really impact the lives of traditionally red voters.
What about Americans moving to Canada? The number would be less, but I’m thinking they would be overwhelmingly Democratic due to Canadian educational and related requirements.
Also, if global warming was so rapid as to cause mass migration out of the southern U.S., geo-engineering, to reduce the intensity of sunlight — something that now seems to have poor risk-reward — would probably become a reality.
If climate change impacts are so grave that it compels mass migration from the American South and Southwest to above the 40th parallel, which party is in charge of the legislature and the White House is going to be about the least of the concerns. Setting aside the dire consequences this would have on agriculture and food costs, there would be a manifest crises in housing and employment for these ‘climate refugees’. Frankly, the degree of social unrest and economic difficulties which would result from such a dramatic demographic change would probably push the country further toward authoritarianism to cope with the changes regardless of which party is ostensibly in control, just as both Trump and Biden administrations (and frankly, the Obama administration previously) imposed severe restrictions on immigration and control of the US-Mexico border.
Unfortunately, this environmental pressure is coming, and possibly even faster than you postulate. We have very likely already exceeded the 1.5 °C average global temperature threshold increase above the preindustrial baseline, and appear to be on track to exceed 2 °C by or before 2035. Frankly people should be less concerned about the Electoral College than sustaining some functioning level of industrial society and civil society by 2050, and in preserving the human knowledge base beyond that.
I’m no sociologist or anthropologist or any other gist but it seems to me in modern times it will take a lot more than a few degrees hotter or a few more tornadoes to make a mass migration. Modern conveniences make life easier in harsher conditions. Otherwise we wouldn’t have so many people living in Arizona. Go back a few generations and a couple of years of drought would have meant a migration. Not so much anymore.
Typically when you see mass migrations it’s because they’re going someplace with better economic opportunities or they’re fleeing oppression of some kind. I don’t think a lot of Americans are going to move north unless there’s some economic incentive.
In addition to the above, climate change isn’t only going to impact the American south. One predicted impact of global warming is more extreme precipitation in the Midwest and Northeast, leading to largescale flooding, mudslides and hastened erosion.
Washington’s population has increased 60% in the last 30 years, closer in line to Florida and Texas and way ahead of New York and even California. Somebody is moving there. The weather is supposed to be pretty good, too, especially when compared to the Great Lakes belt. So maybe you have more traffic in Seattle to look forward to.
This is about the clearest summary that I have found on regional climate impacts, and while I would hedge that we cannot make high confidence predictions about absolute changes, it is inline with what the general consensus is on the RCP6.0 scenario that we are currently tracking. It should be noted, however, that both the global surface mean temperature and global ocean mean temperature for 2023 and 2024 (so far) are indicating significantly above predictions, with 2024 coming in more than two standard deviations above mean projections with some temperature anomaly models having exceeded 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial baseline in 2023, with 2024 even hotter.
We can also expect detrimental impacts on global agriculture. With our current globalized food production systems, any impact on the agricultural production of one region has worldwide consequences, and we have become so used to consistent yields of staple crops like corn, wheat, and soya (buffered by reserves) not only for direct consumption but meat production that a significant indefinite decline in yields can have severe consequences even new areas for agricultural development open up. The general public is concerned about sea level rise, big weather events, and personal comfort/habitability consequences of global climate change but the most immediate effect is likely to be on food systems, both on land and in the ocean (where higher temperatures stress aquatic life leading to drastically reduced fishing and harvesting yields on a critical source of protein for about a third of the world’s population), and food instability is a primary correlate to political volatility and civil unrest.
It’s not so much the newness of it, but rather the fact that you can get a lot more house and yard than you can elsewhere for the same amount of money, AND not be too far out in the boonies either.
I mean, if I had a million bucks, I could get a moderately sized home and lot in the Los Angeles area, or I could go to the DFW suburbs and get a 4000 square foot home with a three car garage and probably a half-acre lot for the same million dollars.
One fundamental flaw with our system of government is that it applies perverse incentives in response to differences between the states. It’s sometimes said that the individual states are the laboratories of democracies, so 50 states can try 50 ways of doing something, and see what works best. Except that, with the way our system is set up, the next step is that whatever is worst, spreads.
For example, let’s say that Wisconsin is doing something right, and Texas is doing something wrong. As a result, Wisconsin becomes a nicer place to live. So a lot of Texans move to Wisconsin. The Texans who are moving to Wisconsin are probably more conservative than the average Wisconsinite, and so Wisconsin gets redder. Meanwhile, though, the migrants are probably more liberal than the average Texan, so Texas gets redder, too. And both states still have the same number of Senators before and after the migration. So the reward for liberals doing a better job is that both states and the Senate get more conservative.
Hypothesis, not my own: cities push people left. Rubbing shoulders with a diverse group of people naturally increases your taste for social services.
Related hypothesis: the relationship between bigotry and the foreign born share of the local hypothesis first increases, then declines. So bigotry is low in homogeneous areas. Then it increases as the newcomers move in. Then it declines as their faces become familiar and they become neighbors.
So the key to increasing the number of liberals is decreasing sprawl and building housing in urbanized areas. That means supporting the YIMBY movement.
Or you could move to a suburb of Rochester and get an 8000 sq. ft. home on a five-acre lot for the same million dollars.
Or even be sensible, get the 4000 sq. ft. home for $500,000 and have another $500,000 to play with.
The catch, of course, is that you would still be in Rochester. It’s a perfectly lovely place to live and has essentially no traffic. By DFW or Los Angeles standards your time stuck in a jam would go from 60 minutes a day to 60 minutes a year. But also by DFW or LA standards, it’s a hick town with nothing happening.
That’s the challenge is getting people to move north. Obviously New York and Chicago have all the urban amenities. But Rochester - and Bridgeport and Albany and Allentown and Toledo and Flint and dozens of other medium-sized Rust Belt cities - are hard sells in their current conditions.
Agreed but… Rochester has the University of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music. Touching Lake Ontario; has waterfront property along the Erie Canal. So much potential. But yes, it needs a bigger anchor corporation than Wegman’s.
Climate change might soften the cold winters, but won’t remove Rochester from the snow belt. Temperatures currently go into the 90s in June, July, and August; it’s a wet heat. So I doubt whether it will be a go-to climate refuge location.
For years now, the UofR and RIT have been promising that photonics is the Next Big Thing and their world-class optical programs will spawn another silicon valley. They have a world-class fusion program too. Such treasures!
Our winters are definitely getting milder - snow plowing businesses are desperate - and the climate forecast is for only moderate warming, 15 feels-like-over-95 degrees days in a year thirty years from now. The site that gives that forecast wildly overstates the number of over 90 degree days today, so even that number is probably high.