With Climate Changes, Alaska, The Northwest, And Detroit Might Be Among The Best Places To Live

Cities Climate Change

Climate change raises questions of where would be the best place to live in the future. Some areas might wind up under water, suffer from droughts, or just be too hot to be comfortable. Canada and Alaska might be much more desirable places to live in a warmer climate. Some portions of the continental United States are likely to have less adverse impact, such as the Northwest and parts of the Midwest. The New York Times looked at which cities might be the safest.

One geography professor recommended Alaska:

“If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published in Nature last year predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.

“The best place really is Alaska,” he added. “Alaska is going to be the next Florida by the end of the century.”

The Pacific Northwest might be a good alternative if you don’t want to go as far as Florida, especially if you like wine:

“The answer is the Pacific Northwest, and probably especially west of the Cascades,” said Ben Strauss, vice president for climate impacts and director of the program on sea level rise at Climate Central, a research collaboration of scientists and journalists. “Actually, the strip of coastal land running from Canada down to the Bay Area is probably the best,” he added. “You see a lot less extreme heat; it’s the one place in the West where there’s no real expectation of major water stress, and while sea level will rise there as everywhere, the land rises steeply out of the ocean, so it’s a relatively small factor.”

Clifford E. Mass, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, writes a popular weather blog in which he predicts that the Pacific Northwest will be “a potential climate refuge” as global warming progresses. A Seattle resident, he foresees that “climate change migrants” will start heading to his city and to Portland, Ore., and surrounding areas.

“The Pacific Ocean is like our natural air conditioning,” Professor Mass said in a telephone interview. “We don’t get humidity like the East Coast does.”

As for the water supply? “Water is important, and we will have it,” Professor Mass declared. “All in all, it’s a pretty benign situation for us — in fact, warming up just a little bit might be a little bit welcome around here.”

Already, he said, Washington State is gearing up to become the next Napa Valley as California’s wine country heats up and dries out.

There are also some places which you might have been less likely to guess would become desirable, such as Detroit:

There may be other refuges to the east. Don’t count out the elevated inland cities in the country’s midsection, like Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee and Detroit, said Matthew E. Kahn, a professor of environmental economics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“I predict we’re going to have millions of people moving to those areas,” he said in a telephone interview.

In his 2010 book “Climatopolis,” Professor Kahn predicts that when things get bad enough in any given location — not just the temperatures and extreme weather, but also the cost of insurance and so forth — people will become “environmental refugees,” fleeing cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. By 2100, he writes, Detroit will be one of the nation’s most desirable cities.

In that case, maybe businesses should look to the future and come rebuild Detroit, which could really use the help well before 2100.