Climate change and desperate journeys

I t's happening already, of course.

- JON GERTNER

You can see it in the blazes in California, incinerating homes and forcing residents to escape the terror of wildfires. You can glimpse it in Arizona, where droughts have pushed farmers to give up on growing crops and sell their fields to developers.

On the coasts, tides are rising, flooding vulnerable seaboard cities as a pervasive warmth expands ocean volumes and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland melt into the water.

And finally, there are the heat waves: Weeks of infernal temperatures that literally kill residents of Western states who venture too long outside. "The places around the world we think we can live in now," Abrahm Lustgarten explains in On the Move," his fascinating new look at the population changes wrought by climate crisis, "will not be the same as the places where we will be able to live in the future."

In a larger context, he warns, we may now be on the cusp of "the largest demographic shift the world has ever seen.”

Where will we go? When? And will we be welcomed? To answer these questions, Lustgarten gathers academic studies and examines models that simulate future migration scenarios; he then combines his insights with reporting.

He has personal experience to draw on, too. A wildfire-weary Californian, he lives in fear that underwriters could render his home worthless, or that the next conflagration could destroy his town. Should he move his family? With each passing year the question is becoming more difficult to ignore. He keeps a bag packed, water and flashlights at the ready, knowing that burning season means he may have to flee at any moment.