Relocation and the Climate Crisis
Who gets to pick up and move and why?
Dear friends,
It has been quite a week for the climate crisis and the way it plays out in our lives here in North America.
I spent most of the week in Minnesota, visiting dear friends and reporting on a cooperative of regenerative farms that I’ve had my eye on for a while (more on that soon). I was also looking at the place—Minnesota, and the upper Midwest more generally—through the lens of a possible relocation.
I think a lot about finding a less unstable place to live in the face of climate crisis, but it wasn’t a real-estate tour. I was trying to gauge whether it felt like a place we could land. Could we live with so much snow, so little light in the winter months, and such hot and humid summers? What would it be like to plant trees and tend a garden somewhere with such a short growing season?
In my peripheral view at all times is the fact that the livable parts of the planet are shifting, moving toward the poles at a pace of 3.8 feet per day. This change will likely bring about the “greatest wave of global migration the world has seen,” making the role of national borders all the more cruel and outdated. Many of us will have to move. That part is, sadly, not negotiable. But I have been thinking a great deal about who gets to migrate and why, and feeling a familiar but paralyzing combination of shame (why should I get to move north when so many people cannot?) and responsibility (knowing what I do, how can I not make the best decision for my child?).
I arrived home as people all over the East Coast struggled with the shock and terror that overtakes us when something as simple and elemental as breathable air is taken away. I experienced glimmers of optimism as Biden sent hundreds of firefighters to Canada and some Democrats in Congress urged him (in vain) to declare a climate emergency. Many of my West Coast neighbors registered—and smarted at—the fact that these fires garnered a very different kind of national attention than the ones we’ve seen here in recent years. This time, the national question hasn’t just been, “What will happen to all the beautiful places?” Instead, more people were now asking, ”What will happen to us?”
This is all to say, I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one this week wondering if and when I should pick up and move.
But it strikes me that the more important work required of many of us in this moment is moving something within ourselves. And what we mean by “us” is worth examining. I’d argue it’s time to shift our relationship with the natural world so that we reawaken a personal and collective sense of responsibility and concern for more than just ourselves and our immediate families.
While I was in Minnesota, I had a chance to visit with Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, an agronomist, farmer, and visionary who grew up in a forest farm in Guatemala. After touring his chicken barns, tree nursery, and rain-catchment pond, we sipped lemonade in the shade of the forest that borders two sides of the farm. Haslett-Marroquin has been gradually, expertly transforming a conventional corn and soy operation into a thriving perennial-based ecosystem. He spoke about the dominant approach to American farming in contrast to what he calls “the Indigenous intellect”— the deeply rooted way of living in reciprocity with the natural world that white settler-colonists have worked so hard to eradicate for the past four centuries. His vision for a network of regenerative farms is based on a traditional Mayan model of governance that is shaped like a circle, with each person, each farm equally responsible to one another and to the system at large.
For the many millions of Americans who are generations removed from the land, finding the way back involves taking a hard look at our settler socialization, and listening in new/old ways to Indigenous people and to those for whom those kind of reciprocal relationships with the land, and with one another, are still intact.
But none of that is easy to do—especially when we’re enshrouded in smoke, surrounded by drought, and enduring the kinds of long stretches of heat that humans can’t endure without technology. When I think about leaving the house my family has been renting in Oakland for 12 years, along with the plants I’ve nurtured in my tiny backyard, my community garden plot, and my friends and family, I am admittedly beset by very real waves of nausea. But the fact that I can make a plan to do the same things somewhere else and feel reasonably confident I can do that is a privilege with which I am actively grappling.
As I spend time absorbing, sharing, and amplifying the stories of people who have been displaced from their homelands by force, by political violence, and by genocide, as well as those who have chosen to leave, stay, and return to the land they know intimately, I do not take the decision to move lightly.
And I am struck by the fact that the coming years will demand of humans a nearly impossible balance. We will be most resilient if we develop, maintain, and preserve the parts of ourselves that recognize a deep responsibility to the land, the water, the atmosphere, the birds, and the pollinators where we live. And many of us will also have to move physically—and to adjust to living more fluid, responsive, and—let’s face it—less stable lives than the ones to which we’re accustomed.
Who among us will be able to do both those things at once? (Asking for 7 billion of my closest friends.)
Climate news you may have missed
Smoke screen
While there is abundant evidence pointing to the health risks of wildfire smoke, Fox News this week welcomed a guest named Steve Milloy who claimed there are no negative health impacts from breathing in the air pollution from the fires burning in Canada. Journalist Amy Westervelt, who has her finger on the pulse of all things disinformation in the climate space, took to the Intercept to fill readers in on Milloy’s abundant experience fighting for the tobacco industry and fighting against clean air regulations. Most chilling, however, is the fact that Milloy had a significant role in Trump’s transition team, wants to do away with the EPA altogether, and is ready to step back into the action if Republicans regain control of the White House in 2024.
The latest in hotness
El Nino has arrived again, and while it’s not clear exactly what this climate phenomenon will bring, there are loads of predictions going around. The key takeaway is warmer temperatures in the ocean and on land. And while El Nino will likely cause dry conditions across the Northern and Southwest U.S., it could also mean a wetter two-to-three year period for some parts of California. Already this month, the planet has been so warm that ocean temperatures continue to break records and Antarctic sea ice is also at a record low.
We hit a global average temperature of 1.5 C above preindustrial levels on June 8th—the second time this has happened this year. While a collection of 1.5 C days is different than the global average hitting 1.5 C—that’s the threshold 200 nations agreed to keep warming below at the Paris Agreement in 2015—every one-time spike adds up, and it would take a rapid drawdown from where we are today to prevent us from hitting that global average. (Here’s a good overview of the difference between 1.5 C and 2.0 C warming).
All oil barons on deck
If the writers of “The Simpsons” had dedicated an episode to the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), they would most definitely have cast the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Ahmed al Jaber in the lead role. I can almost hear the voiceover announcement:
Fossil fuel emissions are at an all-time high and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Now, we’d like to introduce the new president of COP28…who also happens to be the CEO of the world’s largest oil company.
Unfortunately, the absurdity is real. In May, 130 lawmakers from the U.S. and Europe sent a letter calling for Al Jaber’s removal. Michael Bloomberg defended him, pointing to the fact that he’s also the world’s largest investor in renewable energy, and adding “all hands are needed on deck.” Then, just a few days later, Al Jaber was accused of attempting to greenwash his Wikipedia page after his staff apparently edited it to downplay his leading role at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). This week, as leaders from around the world convened in Bonn, Germany, for climate talks in the leadup to the November conference, the Guardian reported that ADNOC officials have had access to the official COP28 email account, suggesting there is no daylight between the company and the conference organizers.
Until last week, Al Jaber had been talking about emissions without mentioning the oil and gas that are the leading source of those emissions, and several media outlets noted it when he finally admitted that, “the phasedown of fossil fuels is inevitable.”
But not everyone is buying that line, given the evidence at hand. Richard Pearshouse, environment director at Human Rights Watch, reminded readers: “The UAE COP28 host is a petrostate with a deeply repressive government that is aggressively expanding its fossil fuel industry.”
On the brighter side
Miraculous hydropanels are being used by low-income residents along the Texas-Mexico border to collect water out of the atmosphere using solar power. This story is several weeks old, but it’s worth sharing because: They’re making water out of thin air!
You probably don’t need a study to tell you that trees are good for your mental health, but I was heartened to see a series of recent findings that prove access to green spaces reduces depression and isolation. It would be great to that science influence urban design and public policy more directly in the years ahead.
Sixteeen teenagers in Montana are suing the state for failing to uphold its constitution promise of a healthy environment and the case went to trial this week despite efforts by Republican lawmakers in the state to block it altogether. This is the first such case in history, and the young people hoping to bring a similar case to trial in Hawaii later this year are likely watching the proceedings very closely.
Greta Thunberg graduated from high school this week—marking not only her own right of passage, but a milestone for many of us who have been following her work over the past five years. She announced over Twitter that she plans to continue to strike on Fridays, even though she may no longer be striking from school per se. Thunberg has never been your typical teenager, but my question is: Will she continue to be given access to so many stages, where she is known for dishing up real talk and direct critiques of both the world’s governments and the fossil fuel industry, as she leaves behind others’ ideas of her youthful innocence? I certainly hope so. “We who can speak up have a duty to do so,” she wrote. “In order to change everything, we need everyone.”
The visuals
The sun setting over the Cannon River in Northfield, Minnesota.
Intermediate mariposa lily, photos by Laura Camp.
Wildflower count by Jane E. Hall.
Gooseberries by Jennifer Selway.
Top banner by Mara Greenaway.
But I’m not ready to move to the Midwest! Although I’m ready if we can all find a little old run-down town to refurbish. I call dibs on running the general store.
As someone who had the means and privilege to move from California, where I lived most of my life, to the PNW, this one hit me in the gut. I think about and have been grappling with feelings of guilt over that. I know also that I have not escaped the impacts of climate change. It is still evident in the weird weather here, and in the natural world that surrounds me. It's ever-present in my daily thoughts. But moving has lessened my grief and anxiety to a point where I feel more equipped to face what is happening with whatever small positive actions I can take instead of despair.