Shelly Culbertson
Representatives from countries around the world are convened in Baku, Azerbaijan, through Friday (November 22) for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the COP29, for ongoing talks on carbon emission reductions and the mitigation of climate-change-induced droughts, heatwaves, and rain. Among the long list of topics is what happens to people who live in the hardest-hit locations. We have already seen the impacts in the United States.
News reports suggest that after back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton, some coastal residents of the southeast are ready to pack up and move. And yet, between 2021 and 2023, despite well-known risks from climate change, property values there continued to rise. Florida, in fact, was the fastest-growing state in the United States. Likewise, despite unprecedented heat waves and increasingly strained water supply, Arizona’s population has also continued to increase.
Storms, droughts, flooding, heat—all these can affect people’s decisions about where to live or relocate, a phenomenon known as climate migration. However, as the push and pull of Florida’s weather on Americans shows, the relationship between climate change and migration is not direct or linear.
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