very much. >> Environmental news, smoke
from Canadian wildfires drifted down into Wisconsin this week,
putting Eau Claire and Marathon counties under unhealthy air
quality advisories, droughts, fires, heavy storms and flooding
are a daily reminder of how climate change impacts people's
lives and where they decide to live. Select cities like Madison
have been deemed climate havens because it's believed they'll
see less intense effects of climate change. Here and now.
Next generation intern Hannah Ritvo has this story.
>> The August that we left, it was so dry and so hot that there
were wildfires. Actually encroaching on Austin as we were
leaving, as we were driving down the highway, it was literally
just scorched black earth. >> Jessica Mederson left Texas
12 years ago to escape the heat. >> Everybody in the world wants
to be in Austin and I loved it a lot. But I hated the heat.
>> Mederson is among many who have left their homes to adapt
to a changing climate. Over 3 million Americans have already
moved due to climate change. >> If you look at the US alone
last year there had been $1 billion weather disasters almost
every two weeks on average. >> Some of these migrants could
be headed to places called climate havens.
>> A climate haven is the idea of a place that's a refuge or a
safe spot from the impacts of climate change.
>> Madison is routinely cited as one of six climate havens around
the United States. >> It's been hypothesized that
this area of the country could be a climate haven, because it
might escape the worst of climate change impacts.
>> Steve Vavrus is the state climatologist and co-director of
the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.
what we don't have. We don't have hurricanes. We don't have
big wildfires, and we're far away from sea level rise. So the
combination of those things has made a lot of people speculate
that our region of the country could be very attractive to
so-called climate migrants, but it's not all sunshine and
rainbows. >> Vavrus says potential climate
migrants should be aware of Madison's own increasing climate
extremes. >> We get a lot of heavy
rainfalls, we get a lot of flooding. We often get heat
waves, too, that are hot and humid and then last summer we
had so much wildfire smoke and that caught people off guard.
>> The 20 tens were Wisconsin's wettest decade on record by far.
>> We had a lot of flooding events across the state in that
decade, and one of the worst, maybe the worst in that decade
was in 2018. In August in Dane County, where just about a foot
of rain fell in 24 hours, which was a statewide record. And it's
an incredible amount of rain. It's more like Hurricane
amounts, and it certainly caused terrible flooding. It even
caused one fatality, he says. >> The concept of climate havens
started about six years ago. >> This is something that I
don't think scientists anticipated would would draw so
much public interest. It's something that that was really
kind of a groundswell of interest from the masses. And
that's caught the attention of a lot of climatologists.
>> And it's a debated notion because there are many reasons
that people move the cost of living, the quality of education
>> This is a big issue in , the availability of housing.
and rents, and not everyone can Madison with high house prices
>> There are communities who are escape disaster.
unable to move due to poverty or social norms, or disability or
age. We have a history of locating polluting industries in
low income and minority communities. The environmental
justice movement started as a result of that. So these are the
same communities that are disproportionately affected by
climate change. executive director of the Human
rights program at UW-Madison >> I look at the link between
human rights and environmental issues, especially climate
change, Atapattu says. >> There is anecdotal evidence
that individuals are moving to Madison due to the impacts of
climate change, but not enough data yet to truly know.
Nonetheless, climate migration is already happening around the
world. relocated as we speak. Some
communities are awaiting relocation in, and people are
moving, she says. >> Climate change is a global
problem with local impacts. >> It's important for us to
realize that the decisions we take will have repercussions.
Thousands of miles away, small island states and people who are
living there, they will be the ground zero of climate change
because they might lose everything they have, including
their country. So we don't really know where those people
will go and what will happen to those countries.
>> Atapattu says. The most important thing we can do is
educate ourselves and prepare sufficiently for disasters and
migration. And cities, especially those deemed climate
havens, must be ready to accommodate an influx of
potential climate migrants. Experts estimate more than 1
billion people could be displaced in the next 25 years
due to changing weather. >> Can their infrastructure
handle a lot more people? These are things that communities need
to be thinking about anyway. >> Some cities have already
begun promoting themselves as climate havens.
>> Lake superior big enough for everyone.
>> Buffalo and Duluth are two communities that have gone all
in with advertising and encouraging people to come to
their communities, and hopefully they have the ability to take in
a lot of residents fairly quickly.
>> Madison hasn't promoted itself that way, but Vavrus says
it is important the city gets ready for potential climate
migrants, as it's clear the Midwest may be more immune to
severe climate impacts than other regions.
>> But again, people need to recognize that we've got our own
challenges when it comes to climate and extreme weather
here, too, that there's really no safe place from the impacts
of climate change. >> For "Here& Now" I'm Hannah
Ritvo in Madison. >> Hannah Ritvo is graduating
from Umms Madison and completes her work with Here and Now this