[MCN] US sea level refugees will bring impact to every US state

[Lance Olsen]

Nature Climate Climate Change April 17 2017

Rising seas force migration <http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nclimate3271>
Matthew E. Hauer et al.
Sea-level rise will impact heavily populated coastal areas, necessitating adaptation or migration. This study considers how potential migration away from affected areas will have a broader effect on the US population landscape.

Abstract [bold added]
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html <https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html>

Many sea-level rise (SLR) assessments focus on populations presently inhabiting vulnerable coastal communities1 <https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html#ref1>, 2 <https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html#ref2>, 3 <https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html#ref3>, but to date no studies have attempted to model the destinations of these potentially displaced persons. With millions of potential future migrants in heavily populated coastal communities, SLR scholarship focusing solely on coastal communities characterizes SLR as primarily a coastal issue, obscuring the potential impacts in landlocked communities created by SLR-induced displacement. Here I address this issue by merging projected populations at risk of SLR1 <https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html#ref1> with migration systems simulations to project future destinations of SLR migrants in the United States. I find that unmitigated SLR is expected to reshape the US population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants—even after accounting for potential adaptation. These results provide the first glimpse of how climate change will reshape future population distributions and establish a new foundation for modelling potential migration destinations from climate stressors in an era of global environmental change.
****************************************************************************************
“Finally, we are committed to a high level of consumption because, whether we need the goods or not, we very much need the employment their production provides …. We are chained to a high level of production and consumption not by the pressure of want but by the urgencies of economic security.”

John K. Galbraith.
“How much should a country consume?”
In Jarrett, Henry (editor), Perspectives on Conservation.  John Hopkins Press. 1958
================================
“In an attempt to clarify the issues, first let us advance the following proposition: The more wasteful a society the greater the employment opportunities.”

Kimon Valaskakis, Peter S. Sindell, J. Graham Smith, and Iris Fitzpatrick-Martin. The Conserver Society. 1970. Harper & Row.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bigskynet.org/pipermail/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org/attachments/20170417/fea63cc9/attachment-0002.html>