"The Optimal range of temperature and precipitation is shifting northward on the planet" because of climate change, remarked ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten during a session on preparing for climate migration at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He explained that the US is being squeezed from the West Coast and the South and, to a lesser degree, the East Coast toward the North, where the climate is cooler and the Great Lakes provide an abundance of water. 

With an expected population shift, Shana Tabak, Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, suggested that local leaders will have to think more about how to integrate people who will move to urban areas from coastal areas.

The third and final person on the panel at the Washington think tank, Beth Gibbons, Resiliency Officer for Washtenaw County, Michigan, is already working on these issues in the county located outside of Detroit. She added, "One of the most compelling ways that we bring people along on a conversation about climate change isn't to talk about the change that is coming but the change that is already with us."

Social justice was also on the minds of panelists. They discussed the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans's least-incomed people. The "Black and Brown populations lived in more vulnerable areas, more coastal areas that were less insurable, and they weren't able to have the money to return," explained Tabak.

Gibbons stressed that each area's response to climate change will not be the same. She reminded the audience that 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water is in the Great Lakes. This news is great for cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Gary, Chicago, and Milwaukee, which are on the Great Lakes.

Lustgarte is more pessimistic about California. He explained that state-sponsored insurance has given people a choice when their private insurance pulls out. Given the recent fires, he thinks the Golden State "will likely face claims that will bankrupt its state-run system."

See the Brookings Institution session.

From Our Archives:
Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are: Renovating IN Gary, IN
CLIMATE CHANGE

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COMING At Brookings

Washington, DC
Denied No More: A Conversation with John Boyd, Jr.
president of the National Black Farmers Association
The Brookings Institution, Saul Room
1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Thu, Feb 20,1a-12p