Hurricanes Helene and Milton wreaked havoc on the U.S. south, including some areas that were once thought to be safe from the effects of climate change. These climate havens are seeing high levels of immigration as people look to move away from heavily affected regions. However, as global temperatures rise and climate change continues to worsen, no place on Earth will truly be free from the disastrous effects.
A climate haven no more
Climate safe havens are “areas touted by researchers, public officials and city planners as natural refuges from extreme climate conditions,” said PBS News. In the U.S., these locations tend to be in the Midwest or quite inland from the coast. One of the most popular “safe” places was Asheville, North Carolina, where many have opted to move to because they “viewed this as a safe haven from wildfires out west and hurricanes that were hitting more coastal areas,” Mike Figura, an Asheville-based real estate broker, said to NPR. But the pummeling from Hurricane Helene left some of the worst damage in North Carolina, with almost one-third of the hurricane deaths occurring in Buncombe County, which encompasses Asheville.
“Many folks seeking out climate-change-protected places in the U.S. have leaned toward small, progressive cities in relatively cool parts of the Midwest and East,” said Yale Climate Connections. The problem is that climate change has caused both the atmosphere and the ocean to be warmer, which both act as fuel for a hurricane and allow it to reach further inland. While many in the coastal regions were directed to evacuate in preparation for the storm, most deaths still “occurred farther inland, in the mountainous terrain where challenges such as spotty cell and internet services, limited experience with hurricanes and more limited evacuation infrastructure” left people “feeling caught off guard,” said an analysis by World Weather Attribution.
Climate change has been bringing more extreme weather all over the world from stronger hurricanes to wildfires to droughts. “What happened in western North Carolina really speaks to the challenge of atmospheric warming generating heavier rainfall,” said Nicolas Zegre, director of the Mountain Hydrology Lab at West Virginia University, to The Washington Post. “That is a tremendous amount of water that has nowhere to go.”
A misleading notion
The idea of a climate safe haven is misleading according to some experts. “Climate change is sort of a pervasive issue that is going to affect communities all over the world — not equally — but definitely it will impact everyone, everywhere in some way,” Antonia Sebastian, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said to ABC News. Safe havens are simply seeing more severe effects more slowly than some other regions. “What I think people are kind of missing from their interpretation of ‘climate haven’ is this issue of likelihood,” Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said to NPR. “Just because it is less likely for a specific disaster to happen in one community does not mean that it is not going to happen in that community.”
“The idea of a climate refuge itself is kind of an escapist fantasy,” Billy Fleming, director of the McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said to Vox. “To the extent that a climate refuge even exists, it’s not a particularly physical or geophysical phenomenon. It’s social and economic.” The climate crisis disproportionately impacts those of lower socioeconomic status as they have fewer means to protect themselves or evacuate high-risk areas. But even with money, it is “unlikely that any places will be truly safe from climate change — and even high-elevation, inland areas are vulnerable to drowning in a world where planetary warming is fueling heavier rains,” said the Post.