Where Can You Move to Avoid the Climate Crisis?

“We lived in Oakland where we owned a home for over 20 years. The natural and man-made disasters got to be too much for us,” Rita Liberati explained to SF Gate after her move to central New York. “My partner is retired, but my employer gave the OK for me to work remotely for which I'm grateful.”

A closer look, though, reveals a disheartening answer to the question of where can you move to be safe from the effects of the climate crisis. Hint: it's basically nowhere.

In a “Dear Abby” style advice column tackling that exact question, Grist called the impulse to flee to avoid climate disruptions “reasonable” because “climate change rivals nuclear war for the greatest threat to human life in the history of our species' existence. Every survival instinct we've cultivated to date should, understandably, make us want to get away from it.”

According to Fast Company, the risk is not the same everywhere, and some places will suffer more extreme impacts from the climate crisis. Miami, for example, already floods with high tides. By 2060, 60% of the city will suffer chronic flooding; by 2100, that number jumps to 90%, Fast Company reported. In Alaska, some residents have already been forced to relocate because melting permafrost and erosion have caused parts of their village to wash away into the sea, reported Yale Climate Connections.

Jesse Keenan, a Harvard climate adaptation specialist, suggested the Upper Midwest and parts of Minnesota as more comfortable locales in the face of the climate crisis because they are rural, wooded, Northern and stocked with fresh water, the Grist reported. Keenan quickly followed up saying that if everyone moved there, those “climate strongholds” would be quickly overrun and overtaxed. Another Grist article also noted that those regions would suffer crop diseases, pests and algal blooms in the Great Lakes because of climate change.

Dave Anderson bought a 70-acre ranch in Oregon as a “Plan B” escape property for his family if their homes in Houston ever became uninhabitable, reported the New York Times.

I'm no doomsday prepper,” he told the Times. “That said, we intentionally purchased a relatively remote property well above sea level, with ample water and wildlife, with the expectation that the property would survive for generations of family use.”

While his property sounds relatively safe, according to Grist, Oregon itself is under a consistent threat of wildfires, scarce fresh water sources, and big earthquakes.

“There's nowhere you can hide. I think you need to come to terms with what you think you're running from,” Keenan told Grist.