On the Move: How Climate Disasters Are Changing Where We Live

by Abrahm Lustgarten

Humanity is on the precipice of a great climate migration, and Americans will not be spared. Tens of millions of people are likely to be driven from the places they call home. Poorer communities will be left behind, while growth will surge in the cities and regions most attractive to climate refugees. America will be changed utterly.

Abrahm Lustgarten’s Unlivable is the definitive account of what this massive population shift might look like. As he shows, the United States will be rendered unrecognizable by four unstoppable wildfires in the West; frequent flooding in coastal regions; extreme heat and humidity in the South; and droughts that will make farming all but impossible across much of the nation.

Reporting from the front lines of climate migration, Lustgarten explains how a pattern of shortsighted policies encouraged millions to settle in vulnerable parts of the country, and introduces us to homeowners in California, insurance customers in Florida, and ranchers in Colorado who are being forced to make the agonizing choice of when, not whether, to leave. Employing the most current climate data and predictive models, he shows how America’s population will be squeezed northward into a shrinking triangle of land stretching from Tennessee to Maine to the Great Lakes. The places many of us now call home are dying, and Unlivable reveals how we’ll deal with the consequences.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Climate Change, Environment, Economics, History, Nature

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2024

Reviews

[Mai H.]

Non-fiction November TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux

[Gab · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is terrifying in an eye-opening way.

With concrete examples, the author explains how climate change impacts the United States, not just how natural disasters are more frequent and more severe, not just how the coasts are being swallowed by water, not just how the temperatures are becoming unlivable, not just how we're running out the water and farmlands are rapidly decreasing, not just how migration will come from others countries as well as other states and completely redesign the population distribution, ...

There are so many aspects of climate change I had never fully considered, and putting the whole phenomenon into one big picture is truly something I had never seen done before.

I particularly appreciated the section where the author explains how climate change will affect poorer populations and minorities more because they've historically been pushed to live in neighbourhoods that are more at risks, as well as having much less support from organizations and governments to help fund solutions to prevent disasters and less abilities to move elsewhere to avoid them. This conversation is essential to have in all climate change talks, and yet, I had never seen it explained and analysed in such a thorough way.

An absolute must read, not only to better understand the situation we're facing, but to be more apt to question where and how one must adapt to face these changes.


Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read this ARC.

[Anne-Marie Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. An in-depth look into the coming mass migration resulting from climate change over the next few decades. Lots of deep dives into the socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues that will intersect with climate migration in various major US cities and states, as well as some Central and South American countries. Well researched and informative, but a little dry and tedious at times.

[Anissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and engaging read. I first came across Lustgarten a few years ago, while listening to The Daily podcast. The episode, 'How Climate Migration Will Reshape America' really captivated me and so when I came across this book, I had to read it. The podcast pulled from this work directly so it was nice to read the expanded work. Covering past migrations in the United States and the ever increasing cost and unlivability of many regions in the country had me turning pages. Still, I had to read this in smaller bites because it can be overwhelming.

Lustgarten is a good writer and I would read another book of his. Recommended.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written overview of the current and future impacts climate change will bring to the U.S. and other global at-risk areas. Written on both personal and wide-scale perspectives. I especially found the sections on northern areas recruiting climate migrants from the south and how so many political policies get in the way of common sense measures to be interesting.

[Jen Petro-Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrifying.

[Brett Strickland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read an article by Lustgarten on ProPrublica about how Russia stood to benefit from climate change, and I found it fascinating. So when I saw he had a book coming out that circled the same subject I was excited.

My problem with On the Move is the same problem I’m discovering with other forward-looking books on climate change—they promise a picture of the future, but spend 3/4ths of the book looking at the past and present. The book I read about the collapse of globalization begins the same as this one. Flooding in Florida, fires in California, Central America is getting hot. Not sure we need 200 pages covering that in every climate change book (although I had no idea how insurance worked in Florida and that was eye-opening).

The last two chapters were good, interesting to hear how Atlanta is (and isn’t) preparing, and the best was how Ann Arbor and Detroit and the upper Midwest in general are preparing for an influx of citizens. Repopulating abandoned city centers was my favorite idea from this book—but there was WAY more to say about how human migration will change the world in the next 10-100 years and what people are doing to prepare for it.

It’s an important topic, but guess I wanted more theory than evidence. Time to switch gears and hit Dublin Murder Squad number 4: Broken Harbor!

[Dale N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written and accessible.
Upsetting, but provides hope.
How climate change has, and will, impact where humans will live.
Interestingly, predictions are many climate refugees will head to the Midwest.

[Steven Beningo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very disappointing book. It started out fine with some interesting facts and model predictions about the warming planet, but devolved into a call for radical leftist policies that are sure to not work.

[Holly Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unsettling, but necessary read.

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of quotes to share. Very interesting statistics. A decent dose of pragmatism to combat alarmism and fear (although that is also given in due amount). I’d say I liked it, but I still fear there is not much to be done - there are people who should heed the advice of this book, yet for me, it really only says I should move? to protect myself? that is not the message it gives, but everything else is seems too far out of reach… perhaps that shows I have the wrong perspective, but I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine anyone in power making the right choices… now before this becomes even more of a rant, yes, I just realize that means we need to fight harder, but I’ll leave it at that for now

[laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

ngl took me a hot min (no pun intended) to get thru this book bc I was rlly in it for the graphs telling me where in America I should move that would shield me from the most amount of climate impacts... but the author rlly put me in my place when he said that all the wealthy/upwardly mobile young people would flee first, leaving the elderly and disadvantaged ;-;

bit of a scary read but a lot to consider! I feel like we needed action yesterday..hoping that American policy around cities, energy infrastructure, housing, and insurance picks up the pace for the better :''')

[Daniel E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book. If for no other reason than to understand how the changing climate will affect your choice in where to live and the immense impacts coming to property values and insurance markets.

[Erica Guse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book examines the patterns and inequities of climate migration, showing how subsidies blind property owners in America’s most vulnerable areas to the real risks of climate change. Government policies and state funding create a false sense of security, delaying necessary change. Climate migration is already deepening socioeconomic divides as natural disasters offer opportunities for gentrification and rebuilding, often resulting in higher property values for the wealthy. While affluent communities have the resources to relocate and rebuild, marginalized groups are left behind or displaced with limited resources.

A must-read for anyone interested in social justice, geoeconomics, human migration, and the systems that perpetuate disparities.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned a ton and reframed how I thought about a lot of current social issues. There are weak parts (particularly the last chapter) but overall glad I read it.

[Allie Krugman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sobering account of how climate migration will break and remake us.

[Roxy · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book but has some issues with data representation and needed a better editor

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of interesting ideas but also a lot of speculation. It's worth a skim at least--read the sections that intrigue, and skim those that don't.

[Brendan Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book exploring how climate change might lead to mass migration in the US. The book describes the various ways climate might do this (sea levels, hurricanes, drought, heat, wild fires, etc.). Lustgarten has some good examples of communities that have already been affected, and does a decent job describing why modeling migration is tough, and what we might reasonably expect. The book gets to be a bit repetitive at points, though, and places a bit too much faith on long range climate and economic modeling (in general, I think we need to be pretty cautious making projections 50 years out. Technology and society might change a lot).

[Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a bit of a cottage industry for books related to climate and migration, this being the third book I've read in the past 2 years on the subject - The Great Displacement and Nomad Century being the other two I recently read. If you had to choose one then I'd go with this as it's most current. Like the other two it maintains an even hand and though it's global in scope, the author allows sufficient space to go deep in select communities and really connect and listen to a diverse range of voices. 

All of these books come to the same conclusion, climate disruption and it's powerful global impacts are here, they've been here for over a decade, and the effects and repercussions will only increase dramatically in severity each year. I particularly appreciated the author's emphasis on how inequality is a critical factor to consider when proposing solutions and action plans. This book does not pretend their is a magic wand that we can wave to 'fix' the situation but there are some quality proposed courses of action and shifts in outlook and priorities we can make and apply pressure toward that will increase the chances of a less painful landing. However, this is grim reading, but it's essential reading, and I am glad that this book does not sugarcoat the reality that the earth, b/c of a small section of humans exploitive and extractive behavior, will be making life painful for most - unfortunately especially the poor and vulnerable.

You really must read at least one of these books otherwise you risk being run over...

Helpful maps were a plus. 

Sidenote, there's a heap of books that overlap this topic that are worth a look of your interested in this subject, including Fire Weather, The Parrot & The Igloo and The Heat Will Kill You First.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes for _On the Move_ by Abrahm Lustgarten

I found this book on a shelf at my local library. The premise hit all of the right notes to what I see in the next 20-30 years. Change is coming and most people don't want to believe it. As the climate warms, people will need to move. The author makes a lot of good points and shows that while some folks really get it, most do not.

Point about people not moving very far from their original homes after a life changing disaster.

Housing insurance should be the indicator as to what is risky and what isn't. My parents used to live in the California Gold Country, back in the hills, far from town. While there, their insurance rates kept rising and there were warnings that policies may be canceled. They were able to leave before the hammer fell. Some of their previous neighbors either went to the state or Lloyds of London. Oh, did it cost. But people still want to be there, even though the threat of a major fire is super high. Paradise was a warning, but not heded.

Instead, insurance in many states has caused people to believe they are fine in high risk areas. Pro business states want to have socialized insurance to keep people on coasts to keep up the illusion all is fine.

Here is capitalism at its best. Hedge funds are buying up land and resources for the water rights, hoarding water to sell at a higher price as it becomes scarcer in the Colorado river basin. A life dependent commodity is used to make money, but money won't feed you directly.

Florida is a model of what not to do. Keep insurance rates low "to prevent an exodus of people from the state -- and collapse of Florida's economy -- essentially portraying the financial risk posed by hurricanes as less than it actually was." This is the core of Florida's problem. Denile about global warming in order to keep real estate prices high & the tourists coming in. I think the author was too gentle with regards to the insurance scam in the state, as most underwriters left and the state thought it could hold a ton of risky policies without repercussions. The state is in a heap of trouble & the leaders don't want to do anything except be a Potemkin Village (State).

The Florida plan incentivizes people to live where they are at greater risk as the seas rise & the heat increases. Or as the author says, "...the states reappropriated the financial structure of insurance to combat an insurgent environmental force." Except Mother Nature isn't impressed with human systems, like insurance. It only follows thermodynamics.

Hurricane Andrew should have woken up south Florida. It ran over Homestead AFB and the base never recovered. Now its very different with roads through what used to be houses.

The laws around helping farmers through tough years incentivize the wrong behavior. One farmer keeps growing cotton in Arizona, as he budgets for the USA to give him $100k/year to offset losses. If he changes crops, he won't get that income. That ensures that the water is used in the worst way, further accelerating the coming chaos.

There is a thread of not wanting to disturb an areas way of life or core identity. The people in those areas that are dealing with extreme stress of both water and heat are trying to find any way out of their situation that doesn't involve hardship or leaving. The climate will force the change no matter what is done to mitigate the risk.

For example, Atlanta is attempting to make adjustments for more people and a warming climate. But the state legislator blocks them at every turn, even for light rail. You can't wish away sea level rise or the huge influx of coastal people over the next 10-20 years. It is a theme that is persistent in many states, anything that helps people or addresses the climate crisis is socialism and bad.

A solid quote: "...these things appear to have emboldened many Americans with a false sense of security, a feeling that technology or wealth can overcome obstacles to getting what they want..." There isn't any pain to bear or incentive to push for Americans in the way of extreme climate change. Many people in the areas that will be hit the hardest have leaders that don't want to "alarm" their citizens, so nothing is said or done. A bit of pain now will save a lot of pain later. But instead of discussing future plans to cope and build resiliency, a group think of nothing will be different tomorrow takes over, with the blind hope that climate science is wrong.

I didn't realize that flooding in American interior was one of the largest causes of displacement in the nation. It makes sense, with whole towns under water. Just this week the Carolinas were hit with a sort-of tropical storm with up to 20 inches of rain in 24 hours. Some places were near 3 inches per hour. Amazing! Yet it is called a "thousand year" storm, giving people the false sense of hope that it won't ever happen in their lifetimes. It will.

The Great Lakes region has been identified for quite awhile as the go-to place for Americans as the climate warms. The rich people are already buying big houses around the lakes and Wall Street is buying up big tracts of land. It has everything going for it. I found it amazing that the 2020 US Census showed a big outflow from the north to the cities in the southern USA. Give it 10-20 years, they'll be wanting to move back. The area is stable, has a lot of fresh water and can grow a lot of food. New Yorkers will go to Buffalo, Chicago could grow even more.

I like the author's point about the great Migration in the early 20th century, as Black people went north to work. It caused a renaissance in art & literature. Change can be good, people intermingling can be good.

With the way Americans behave, the movement of people to less risky areas will be a trickle, then a flood. For those in the desert, follow the water. No water, no civilization. For those on the coasts, the ocean is coming for your house either by sea level rise or by a tropical storm that dumps a years worth of rain on you in a day.

At the end, I wanted the author to use the data to extrapolate on possible scenarios, especially those near the top of the warming scale. The charts in the book tell a solid story that large sections of the country will become unlivable (wet bulb temps will be the next thing to track on the phone, after air quality). What happens if Phoenix runs out of water & the farmers don't want to give it up? What happens to Michigan when 1MM people arrive looking for housing and work? By doing a bit of future history, a further discussion of solutions can be had.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, that I would probably shade to 4.5-4.75, not a full 5, for a few small issues.

The first great part is noting how corporate socialist (they are, wingnuts, including the two 2-star nutters, one of who has been blocked.) state disaster insurance programs, which started in Florida (naturally) have distorted the allegedly free markets (which don't really exist in about anything, but I won't ding Lustgarten on that one).

Related to this, Lustgarten notes that by putting a brake on the real cost of homeowners insurance, it diminishes, greatly diminishes, any call at the federal level in the US to do anything real about climate change. (Biden's Inflation Reduction Act was something, not nothing, but on the electrification of America, per the Rewiring America organization mentioned near the end, it was aspirational, not actional, and on things like critical highway corridors, relied on state action, none of which has happened in my "targeted" community on an interstate highway. I digress, but just to point out that the 2-star reviewer who doesn't allow comments is full of it about radical leftism.)

Later on, he compares this to the housing bubble whose bursting started The Great Recession. He says that Florida, in particular, if something like a Hurricane Helene (he obviously wrote the book before it by name) hit Florida during something close to another Great Recession, the state could go bankrupt.

Next, he brings in climate modeling (which is real, contra the blocked guy; computers help model hurricane tracking your 10-day and 30-day weather forecast) and representative concentration pathways, normally shortened to RCPs, which he notes currently run from 2.5 to 8.5, the higher the worse. Maps start from here, many based on a 4.5 versus current, as far as amount of change.

Then, like the decent but not great "The Great Displacement," Lustgarten has interviews. Because climate refugees are part of immigration to the US, whether legal or not, he goes beyond Bittle to go down to Guatemala. And, on agriculture, he goes beyond Bittle, in shades of "Cadillac Desert," to go on the High Plains as well as into the desert.

On the migration issue, he also mentions that it's not only the US that has walls. Hungary does with Serbia, to try to keep out more potential Middle East migrants. India does with Bangladesh. Mexico does not yet with Guatemala, but as former Mexican president AMLO neared his end of office, Mexico became more and more hardline on treatment of Guatemalan migrants.

From there, like Bittle, it's a look at where people might move TO. Here, he looks specifically at Michigan, with an in-depth interview with Beth Gibbons, creator of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. He doesn't bust her chops, but he comes off to me as (rightly) a bit skeptical of her claims. (He doesn't mention that a warmer and wetter Michigan, surrounded on three sides by Great Lakes, will likely become more flood-susceptible in the future.)

Climate justice within the US is also mentioned at various places in the book.

Related? He makes one other great point, when he says most calls for "climate resilience" are really calls for the neighborhood and city "status quo."

===

First small issue? I would have loved something like the RCP temperature and livability maps for rainfall as well. I know the general break for wetter east vs drier west in the US is somewhere near the 98th meridian (Interstate 35's route from Wichita, Kansas as far south as Austin). More precision and detail would have been good.

Second, I have somewhat more idea of where he personally stands on the climate future, more so than I did with Bittle. On RCPs, it's somewhere between 4.5 and 6.5. On temperature, it's at least 3C and open to the possibility of 4C. Still, an explicit weigh-in would have been nice.

Third, this book was officially published this March, a year later than Bittle. I would have thought that maybe, even if the book was fairly in process, he could have gotten in something about summer 2023 flooding in Montpelier, Vermont, underscoring that "climate refuge cities" don't totally exist.

[Robert Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a really valuable resource. There's a lot of denial out there, and a lot of panic as well. The problem, which always keeps me from diving in on the climate disaster topic further, is that we really have no idea what's going to happen. It's less and less disputed that we're already seeing the nasty effects of human caused warming, and that those effects are accelerating. But what does it mean? The irritating thing about the chaos of the weather is that multiple years can look fine! Some California reservoirs can look full again for a year or two! Temperatures don't rise for a couple years! And then things get dramatically worse.

It's a confusing era, and Lustgarten has provided a tremendously useful guide to it. This book aims to tell the story of climate migration, and go through the best predictions of what is going to happen. Wisely, he focuses on what's already happening, the effects of more frequent and worse hurricanes, wildfires, and the drying out of already precarious places like Central America.

I found his deep-ish dive into the mechanisms of insurance markets, and the ways that Florida and California have had to destroy their balance sheets to keep them going most informative, and most alarming. Private companies no longer want to insure many places in California, and most of desirable coastal Florida. So the state steps in. But Florida has already realized that a bad hurricane season could bankrupt the state entirely and they are trying (and failing) to pull back.

So we really could wake up one morning to find that nobody can buy insurance in Florida, which means that nobody can get a mortgage in Florida, which means that something like a trillion dollars of real estate could all of a sudden be worth... nothing.

No matter what the Republicans say, the smart money is already acknowledging that climate change is happening, and is finding ways to get around it. The smart people are not in Florida. Lustgarten provides a number of suggestions for what you can do. Gratifyingly, live in a wealthy area, or the Midwest are his main recommendations, and I've managed both (Harlem isn't Tribeca, but Manhattan's wealthier neighborhoods are a lot closer to the Atlantic than I am).

This is a book designed to shake people out of their complacency. Unfortunately, I think it may have failed to do that for me. The places that are vulnerable today are all quite marginal. He points out that the impoverished who leave their developing world farms move to their developing world cities long before they choose to migrate. The rich could help to stabilize those cities. Coastal Floridians will go to Orlando, dramatically fewer will make it to Atlanta, and the Midwest can easily handle the few who will be smart enough to move all the way North. Lustgarten's own agonizing choice, whether or not to give up his California mountain paradise, is one he faces because he's made a very privileged choice to live on nature's margins.

Broadly speaking, I think I have a lot more faith in the adaptive power of cities than he does. Yes, Houston became unwelcoming to refugees from a hurricane that hit New Orleans back in 2005. Crime soared! Services were not provided! But a few years later that crime blip was gone, and the Katrina refugees were Texans. I don't want to be glib about the wrenching losses of community that he describes. More must be done to protect the poor victims of climate change, here and abroad. But I'm pretty sure we can handle it.

Things need to change though. Lustgarten's doomerism comes from his experience of the idiotic decades long refusal to acknowledge what is happening, and the US's current inability to build anything efficiently. Those are both problems that need to be addressed. I think we will surprise ourselves by how well we deal with them. But Lustgarten may be more in touch with the problem.

[Mario Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books I will read this year. In painstaking detail, Abrahm Lustgarten shows a timeline of costly policy errors that ended up placing more people in climate-susceptible living areas. As storms or wildfires intensified a destruction loop occurred and people did what they have done since the dawn of humanity, they moved. Lustgarten depicts the current state of the country and highlights the important headline, climate migration is already happening. Fires out west and rising seas on our coastlines with a dwindling buffer of protection, Americans are making the tough decision of leaving their homes. What is also clear, our climate is intensifying and the storms or fires we see will only grow worse. Drought is suffocating both the western part of America and our neighboring nations in Central America. There is a chapter about Guatemala that is of the more devastating parts of the book. The crisis of our age is here.

While I understand this subject matter is bleak to look away would be a disservice to your own life planning. Titanic shifts in policy and planning are needed to mitigate current impacts and prepare for the migration we will see. The parts left unsaid is where my thinking went throughout the book. What part of any recent political history makes us believe the American government is capable of taking on a seismic challenge such as climate crisis? If anything the impacts of climate will only further strain our weak government institutions. The only expertise we display is in over-militarized police forces, international arms dealing, and military excursions abroad. When the temperatures rise, so does violence, and that can't be forgotten in a climate planning discussion.

Fortunately the author of this book is more optimistic than I am and for good measure, he is on the ground and interviewing the experts preparing for both the present and future. If you want an intro to the book, Abrahm Lustgarten was featured on a great episode of NPR's Fresh Air which drew me to his work. Some personal favorite anecdotes in the book, my alma mater George Mason University conducted one of the research studies cited polling American's opinion on climate risk. In addition to Lustgarten citing one of my favorite books, The Warmth of Other Suns, a fantastic resource on understanding southern flight in America after Reconstruction. It is tough after reading On The Move to not land on the conclusion, "we are quite literally cooked." Despite the ease of that bleak realization, I hold hope in the resilience of humanity. There simply is no more time to waste, unless we want a reality where we are all On The Move.

[Angie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

As climate change continues society will need to decide which places to invest in and prop up and which ones will be abandoned- will this be done equitably? If Americans migrate en masse in response to environmental dangers it will not be because they want to. Migration is a measure of mobility- and mobility is a measure of wealth. How will people make their decision of where and when to go?

In the US would labor climate refugees as a vector of insecurity but people Displaced by climate change do not have any legal recourse or protection under international human rights laws. Where will the 17-36 million South Asians go when displaced? What will happen to those people in Guatemala and Honduras? Five years after Syrian refugee wave migration still impacts the EU. How will Americans navigate these challenges with limited wealth and opportunity? Much of climate migration will stem from food insecurity. The US overconsumption has led to climate disruption in areas such as Africa- should we be investigating in irrigation and food donations there? Should we help people live where they are to decrease need for them to migrate? John Podesta states”if you have anticipated the effects that are likely to displace populations then what do you need to do to buffer the consequences?” John Kerry worries about wars and fears how migrants will become pawns in global diplomacy as nations seeks to use climate change for leverage to exploit or win concessions. Florida State researcher Hauer estimates 13 million Americans will move as their towns and homes flood. How many will migrate due to wildfires?


The problem is not just that governments incentivize people to live in dangerous places but also they impose a financial burden on other people who don’t take the risk. One person in a low risk places pays to subsidize the risk of a person living in a high risk place. If people had to pay astronomical premiums commensurate with their risk then they might make different decisions. Vermont homeowners pay for the foolhardiness of Florida coastal retirees. Puerto Ricans will lose 1/5th their income annually over next fifteen years as storms fallout continues.

Gentrification is a logical ripple effect of climate mitigation.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a new book. I don't recall how I heard about it. But it follows the thread of other books I've read, both climate related and more social justice. One might consider this a sequel to The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal.

But really it takes a slightly different tack. This book focuses on the idea that the migration has already started. And that it's all about individual decisions about how to react.

Many books lose their way by the concluding last chapter - this book's last chapter is its strongest (though perhaps not to the last paragraph or two).

In November 2004, my family decided it was living in the wrong place (Atlanta, Georgia) for reasons and needed to be somewhere else. And we moved in 2006 to Portland, Oregon. It was not a foregone conclusion - there were many places we were considering. But the climate was part of it. My migration was part of the story of this book.

To some degree this book is a hopeless book - people have already died and are going to die in quite large numbers due to climate change. It's already here. But this book is also quite American - it points out that there are winners and losers (not quite in those bold of terms, but basically). And that if you can take advantage early and move north - away from heat, towards water - then really you should.

Not a perfect book, but worth reading.

[Tej Dhawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book paints a vividly dystopic future of America due to its blend of public policy, a belief in
dominion over the planet, our desire to grow at all cost, and to resist looking beyond our noses. The final pages of the book exhibit the very phenomenon, including the author's own dilemma and decision.

The book draws examples from around the world but, as the cover suggests, focuses on America. It does spend some time in Central America, linking the plight of the human caravans heading North to the American border to the punishment being doled out by mother nature. The punishment that's further exacerbated by the region's own impotent public policy. As the book's discussion crosses into the US border, one senses mother nature's wrath brewing at a low boil. The very present dangers in the American south and their impacts on water, heat, health, livelihoods and homes is discussed at length.

Also discussed are the results of shortsightedness across several smaller towns and cities who sold their future for present day profits. Through these dying cities, the author tries to paint a grim future of our bigger cities and regions. The pictures that are ignored nearly as soon as they're presented.

He discusses why certain regions of the world, primarly the geographic North, will prosper in the decades ahead as sub-equatorial regions bake in oppressing heat, largely unable to sustain life there as we know it.

The Notes to the book are a special treat for the student of this subject - they cite interviews, books, papers, and news articles that will provide much knowledge. A must-look indeed.

[Xun Che · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had read this book two years ago, I probably wouldn't have decided to have a child. Most people I know of either focus a lot on actions to stop climate change or don't care at all. While mitigation feels almost like a losing battle, maybe it's time for us to face the reality and start paying some attention on adaptation at the same time. This book shows how unprepared we are - the mass migration is already happening while luxurious housing continues to be built in the most risky area just to keep the real estate market thrive. It's so unfair that everyone in the society is paying for the bad decisions made by people who chose to disregard the overwhelming evidence of climate change. This book also helps me gain a new perspective of the immigration issue - U.S. produced 25% CO2 the whole world did during the industrial revolution and is at least partly responsible for the desperate climate situation people in central America are facing today. Yet the right-wing politicians only want to demonize the immigrants from those regions to serve their political interest while having no interest in addressing the deteriorating climate. I almost hoped that there is a wall built for them when the day comes when they realize their luxurious mansions on the Florida beach is no longer habitable. It is even more disheartening to consider this book was written during the Biden years when some actions were taken to promote the green energy transition. I wonder what the author is thinking today seeing all the "drill baby drill" farce. The last part of the book gives me some hope, but only if the destination cities of the climate migration are taking the actions.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very informative and, at times, disturbing look at how climate change could affect life and migration in the US over the next few decades.

Of course, the book acknowledges that predictions are not guaranteed, so climate change may not occur exactly as this author presents. But Lustgarten does a really good job at explaining how the predictions he includes were built, and shows the differences between projections of moderate future change to severe future change. He also focuses on types of change, and locations, that are more certain to be affected. For example, rising sea levels will definitely affect some areas, even if the most extreme possibilities are avoided.

Overall his arguments seem well put together, and really underline how nobody will be spared by climate change, even in prosperous countries like the US. This work really supports the idea that we need to be active to prevent the worst possible climate change consequences, as well as to help those people who will bear the brunt of the consequences that do fall (generally poor, and often non-white). That said, the book was published in 2024, with research seeming to end in 2022 or so. Some efforts made in the US to limit climate damage under Biden, which Lustgarten references, have already been rolled back massively, which made me think some of Lustgarten's more severe predictions are now closer to coming true than ever.

Overall, a book with some bleak parts, but a great look at how climate change could affect American society over the next few decades, and a perfect argument for doing everything we can to limit and prepare for climate change consequences.

[Nia Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book every American should read. The science was very accessible thanks to being written by a journalist and interspersed with stories. Some key quotes I took away:

“America’s approach to disincentivizing a rational retreat from hostile environment stems from the very core of its culture: a belief that engineering and ingenuity - not to mention the mechanics of capitalism and investment and innovation - can overcome the powerful natural systems of the planet.”

“Americans’ access to all of those perverse economic incentives - including cheap insurance, water, and energy for cooling - skew their decisions about where to live.”

“…The future will require a portfolio of sometimes-contradictory policies to address the stress of displacement, because while many will be forced to move, others will require support in the places where they will be forced to remain.”

“…He urged the United States to target its foreign aid specifically toward building ecological resilience in weak societies.”

“What the future looks like will largely be a function of urban planning - how communities and their leaders strategize and raise money for their growth or contraction.”

“The Great Lakes should market itself as a climate refuge, she thinks, and then build an economy that makes use of its attributes: the value of its water, its land, its relative survivability. She’d even like to see a federal effort to set up sister cities for climate migrants.”