 Welcome, and thank you for joining the New America Fellows program discussion of Abram Lasgardens great new book on the move, the overheating earth and the uprooting of America. I'm Jeff Godell 2016 National Fellow. Before we start a few things that are important to keep in mind. If you have questions, please submit them to the q amp a function. And we will address them in the second half of this conversation. We're eager to hear what you have to say and I will do my best to include as many of your comments and questions as we can. And very importantly, copies are on the move are available for ordering. There are books selling partner solid state books. You can find the link on this page by the book. It's a great book. It's important to read and to support a Brahms work. Abram Lasgard into 2022 Emerson fellow new America is an investigative reporter writing about climate change at pro public and for the New York Times. His writing also appears in the Atlantic with the Washington Post scientific American his series on drought on the American West was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And his investigation into the oil company was the subject of the Emmy nominated frontline documentary, the spill. His other books include run to failure BP and the making of the deep water horizon disaster. And China's great train Beijing's drive West and the campaign to remake to that. He lives as we will discuss here in the San Francisco Bay area where by chance I also grew up. So we have that in common. Hey, Abram, how are you? How are you? Hey, Jeff, good. How are you doing? Good. Thank you. Congrats on the book on all the great reviews. It's gotten it. I know that. These fewer first weeks after a book comes out are kind of nerve wracking crazy time. How are you doing? Yeah. Thank you. Doing great. There's a lot going on but it's been overwhelmingly positive and it's exciting as I know you know just coming out of your own tunnel of pushing your great new book to so but it's no complaints it's gone great. So I love this book and I really have a lot of respect for what you pulled off here. Because I think one of the most interesting things that you did in the big pictures you took a question that everybody who thinks about climate change even people who don't think about climate change. Ask, which is where should I live? Should I move? Where should I move? The kind of question that is, you know, basically every Uber driver that I mentioned that I write about climate change asked me. And you took it and kind of blew that up and explored it in all its complexity and showed that as with everything in climate, there's no simple answer to these complex questions. And the book really explores the sort of dynamic of that the economics that as you mentioned the spiritual aspects of it the difficult emotional aspects of it and so I think that's, I really, I think that that sort of framing that you've given to this simple question is really terrific and is at the heart of the books appeal. I want to ask you, since I'm assuming a lot of the people who are listening to this are writers and thinking about their own books and how to write books. I want to ask you about your choice about how you framed this book. You know, you the open the book opens, essentially, with a conversation with a woman named. Ellen Hurdell, I'm pronouncing it right and her decisions and her decision whether who's a neighbor of yours or lives in California with you, and her kind of anguish about the aftermath of the wildfires there and things and her anguish about whether to stay or go, and your conversations with her. And I'm just interested strategically as a book writer, how you thought about that and why you use that as the framing for this big story. Yeah, thank you for that intro and your thoughts on the book I appreciate that. Choosing that opening anecdote and Ellen was it was a, it was a kind of a complex process. The thing about Ellen's story is that it's very, very close to my own experience. And when I wrote a magazine article that kind of introduced this subject matter I did write about my own experience, but I didn't want to write a memoir for the for the book. And what I appreciated about Ellen's experience is the uncertainty of it all I think it would be easy to go and find. And I spoke with lots of people who had really dramatic examples of, you know, a fleeing a disaster the certainty of their move, the their arrival and wherever they went. And I think, you know, we would expect that story and we maybe we've heard it before. But the, the thing that I really appreciated about Ellen's experience is that it was, it was just a process and there was no end in sight to that process and that's kind of how I feel personally and that's where I think, you know, a lot of people are as they try to figure out how this changing world is affecting, you know, their individual lives. So, so for her there is no doubt that the constant sort of drum beat of terrible experiences related to wildfires was changing their lives but she hadn't figured out what to do about it. And she wasn't sure that she, you know, you know, would move. And by the end of the book she hasn't moved, and neither have I. And I just, I really like this sort of nuance and uncertainty of her story. Yeah, me too. You know, one of the challenges of writing about climate change that you wrestle with in this book and that I've wrestled with in my books and I think anybody who writes about climate change has to wrestle with is the sort of you know, you just described a very personal narrative, a story about a woman wrestling with this decision and all its complexity. And yet to talk about, you know, your book is full as is my books and anybody who writes seriously about climate change with sort of data and numbers and studies and models and what will happen and what is happening and the future changes that are coming. Having you articulate how you think about that, because, you know, one of my thesis is that, you know, data and numbers turn people off from the emotional engagement that is required for, you know, serious attention to a book, right? You know, charts only go so far and numbers only go so far and it's really difficult in our business and of writing climate books to wrestle with that. And you do a really great job of it, but I'm interested in how you think about that tactically as a writer. I, you're right, it's an incredible challenge. And I've never dealt with a project that was so sort of chock full of, you know, of data and statistics and figures, all of which I personally found fascinating and hope that people who read the book do but, you know, it was an overwhelming amount of information for this project. One of the things that I think helped me from the very start is I, you know, I went out and I did a lot of this reporting and a lot of thinking about, you know, what climate migration means for people from a human side first I happened to do that mostly in Central America not in the United States at first but I was really deeply engaged in the question of, you know, how does somebody make that decision what's the sort of tipping point in a psychological way. So it was more focused on the human experience and this is just a reporting process thing but the numbers came, you know, came to me later. They used a lot of modeling collected a lot of data from the research from rhodium group and others, but by the time I was receiving them they were kind of informing impressions that I already had as opposed to giving me those impressions so I think if that makes any sense and by the time it came to kind of put this together into telling the story, that's the order in which, you know, I was able to tell the story to and I think that helps the statistics find some relevance is, you know, as opposed to just sort of, you know, throwing out an enormous amount of material and hoping that their importance is self evident, you know, that that by interweaving them, you know, in individual, you know, experiences and emotional experiences that aren't just data driven. They provide context instead of sort of being the main story. And interesting. And another strategic decision you made, which I'm interested in you're reflecting on is it the book, you know, is informed by some of your reporting in Central America. There's, you know, lots of references to kind of this as a global phenomenon, but you really focus on America on the United States. You know, I could easily have seen another path for this book that looked at it in a more global, you know, perspective and I understand the daunting challenge of that and all that but I'm interested in, in how you thought about that about I'm going to, I'm going to tell a story, really of America and not of this sort of global transformation. Now I'm going to say the opposite of what I just said, which is that I, the data was the data was so fascinating to me that it sort of begged for, for that story. I wanted to do both of those stories. But, but I became really, really intrigued by, you know, what some of the information I'd collected said about the United States and how specific and granular it was and and I just felt like that presented a million communities to dive into specific counties, whether in Texas or Louisiana or, you know, or Sonoma, California, and, and begin to kind of parse out, you know what was happening in those places. And I feel like that's a missing piece of, you know, climate journalism so far that we're moving in that direction but we've gone from, you know, sort of collectively very broad discussions of global trends continental trends maybe country and, and that hasn't gotten very, very specific. And I don't think a lot of Americans think about how, you know, climate change is affecting their lives other than expressing, you know, experiencing the heat in particular or disasters when they happen. And so this is sort of a convergence of opportunity. I loved, you know, how specific the data was and I just thought it was a novel way to, you know, to have a conversation that would shift that conversation a little bit. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's great. One of my favorite chapters in the book is any gets chapter three, the great American climate scam, which, which I think really doesn't a great job of articulating the forces that are keeping people in place, rather than moving the subsidies, the insurance issues things like that. Talk a little bit about that about about what what is this great American climate scam that you describe in that chapter. The great American climate scam is, you know, is our system of policy supports, which is largely the way the book considers it insurance that has incentivized us to kind of live in places with with the highest risk. And it's not the only reason that people live in places like the coast of Florida or in, you know, in Arizona. But it's made the cost of living in those places and the consequences of living in those places from a climate perspective, cheaper or seem, you know, diminished. So, you know, the chapter tells the story of Hurricane Andrew in Florida, which just devastated Florida and really put like a threatened an immediate stop to Florida's economic growth and development, and and probably, you know, would have in natural circumstances presaged a real like out migration from the state of Florida. And the state looked at that disaster and the cost of it and said we can't, we can't afford to have, you know, people leave this state. It'll change the trajectory of our economy forever. And the insurers looked at the state of Florida and Hurricane Andrew and said we can't in a capitalist system afford to ensure people here so we're not going to offer insurance anymore. And so we solved that problem by subsidizing insurance by creating a state run plan that made insurance available for any homeowner who still wanted to move there and and then made it cheap and actually discounted at 20% below market rates as a way to incentivize and attract people, you know, to continue to move there. And states have replicated a system like that California is using it now to, you know, to encourage people to or to protect people who live in wildfire zones but also to encourage people, you know, to continue to move and build in those regions. And so I looked at that as, you know, as a way of, of mutating sort of the natural signal around, you know, climate risk. The signals that would tell each of us that we're in a dangerous place or that we're in a place that is dangerous to our financial assets or, you know, our savings. And that's what those subsidies do whether they're water subsidies, you know, in the western United States or federal subsidies for flood insurance or, you know, or FEMA back stops after disasters or, you know, these state run insurance plans that are in 30 states now. You know, they mute and distort the signals of risk and I think they've had the effect of, you know, muting public outcry over the severity of the changes in the climate that they're living in. Yeah, so I totally agree, you know, I wrote a book in 2017 about sea level rise called the water will come it was focused on Miami and in Florida. You know, I'm often, you know, people often point out to me well that was almost 10 years ago, Miami still standing it's still booming, you know, and I talk about some of these things that you're mentioning with subsidies and insurance and and people just say hot and you know that's they're just going to continue doing this and no politician wants to really, you know, break the news that we have to change these subsidies we have to reform flood insurance and things. How do you talk in the book a little bit about how this will play out in places like that, you know, the, you talk about the wildfires and paradise and the dislocation from these sort of natural disasters but this. How do you see, in particular for us briefly how you see this political forces that you just described in the climate scam and these subsidies how do you see this playing out. You know, an overall premise of the book is not just that people are going to move eventually as their climate changes but that that decision to move will ultimately be an economic one, not not just an environmentally driven one. So, the climate pressures will change our economic circumstances or economic safety and that's what I think will be sort of the realization moment, you know, for a lot of Americans who do move is that they have a stake, a financial stake in, you know, in making that change and the way that the subsidies, you know, are ending or the way that policymakers begin to confront these, you know, these threats, you know, is a part of that shift and it's really hard to predict, you know, where it goes and how quickly that shift happens. And it might take a while and we might continue to see ongoing subsidies and ongoing growth in places like Phoenix, Arizona for many years to come before it does change. But I think the, you know, the insurance market, for example, you know, is going to continue is continuing to pull out of the highest risk places, and those subsidized markets are facing real headwinds when they're, you know, the book describes in, you know, in great detail. They are not profit making machines, they're losing a great amount of money and as they lose money, they're putting, you know, those very state governments in jeopardy and they're, you know, putting potential costs and assessments on, you know, on policymakers so the financial risk is increasing the environmental risk, the physical dangers of living in wildfire, you know, urban interface zones are increasing. And local governments have counter incentive I mean they don't want to lose population they don't want to lose growth and they don't want to lose the representation that comes with with that population. But inevitably there you know there is going to be a sort of a tipping point I'm seeing that northern California now there's a robust conversation among home homeowners who are being routinely notified that they're losing their wildfire insurance you know about what to do about it and it's you know it's a household dinner table type conversation that is a very like imperceptible shift but it's the beginning of an economic shift that I think is going to you know snowball into something sizable. Yeah it's interesting, you know, I'm talking to you from Austin, Texas where I moved from upstate New York and we can talk about that a little bit of complexities of moving. I feel like I kind of moved into the belly of the beast here. But you talk about in your book also, you know, the, the, and so I see here in, in, in Texas, I go online and I see real estate ads for this low lying, you know, coastal developments that are cheap. And I look you take one look at them and you know they're doomed. I mean they're completely like right on the water in this on the sort of low lying buys but they're really cheap and they're marketing them as inexpensive housing and you talk about in your book you talk about the Louisiana coast and the obvious pressures of people living there with flooding and subsidence and everything. But you also point out that a place like slide L is growing in population right so there's this really interesting push me pull you even with the economic forces. I mean this is the complexity of climate migration is that you know there's no there's no single pathway there's no single tipping point there's no single influence even you know climate migrants aren't only moving to the climate pressures they have all these other interests from love to opportunities to economic forces, etc. And, you know, and yes some places can be seem like a disaster for the people that are living there. And at the same time that they seem like opportunity or relative opportunity to someone else and I think it's that that's really interesting and slide L Louisiana is not the southern most place on, you know, on the continent. And, you know, I chose it because I wrote a lot about in the book that you know this wonderful woman Colette P. Sean battle who, you know is central to this conversation. And also because I think her experiences is really fascinating, her, you know, her family is forced to leave slide L, you know after her King Katrina and she chooses to come back and get engaged in this question of climate migration. But the fact is that, you know, her King Katrina and its aftermath affected the poorest people in slide L the most and they had a difficult time recovering and many of them were forced to leave. But slide L as you just mentioned you know is north of New Orleans and north of all these parishes that are flooding faster. And a lot of those people can afford, you know, to move to rebuild in a place like slide L or to gentrify in a place like, like slide L and so, so it has seen this sort of this like pulsing flux of growth and decline or changes in politics, change, you know, in its wealth as, as people move. And a lot of those movements are, you know, are going to be short distance moves. So we're not, you know, we're, we're talking more about people moving from like New Orleans across, you know, like to slide L than we are about people moving from New Orleans to Michigan. And, and that's what, you know, gives you that that kind of, you know, rapid expansion and contraction. Right, right, right. One of one other aspect of the complexity of this that I really appreciated you highlighting your book and that I talked a little bit about in my book about he is this kind of American idea and faith in technology and ingenuity to save us. You know, there's this, I mean, I get this all the time when I talk about, you know, either than Austin here I get a dinner table conversations in the middle of summer and things people just, you know, talking about whether or leave or not. But this question is like, Well, it's hot yet, but we have air conditioning, you know, and like, people will say to me when I give talks about my book or something like, Well, we just need to get more air conditioning to people and he's not a big deal. Why are you so freaked out about just buy get people more air conditioners. And you talk about that in the book also about just this sort of broad faith that these changes kind of don't really matter unless the water is like coming into your front door that they will figure this out. And that will come up with a fix for it. Talk about about that as one of the sort of dynamics in this change you're talking about. Yeah, you know, and I love the way that you do that in in the heat will kill you first which I just recently finished by the way so just like excellent. To sort of state the obvious I mean I think we have a whole culture in the United States that for you know for 150 years or more has, you know, thought that we could out engineer nature and we've done a pretty good job of it for the most part. And, you know, I think what we're approaching now is a point where maybe we can continue to out engineer nature in certain ways but but there will be ways that we cannot, you know, engineer nature that make it unpleasant to to live in and you know and that's to change the equation a little bit I mean we may be able to if we have limitless amounts of energy and and limitless wealth to purchase that energy, which are two separate problems we might be able to continue to cool our homes forever in Phoenix or in Austin. But we might get really tired of being stuck inside our cool homes and not not being able to go outside and right you know and look at one of the things that that I modeled for this book is wet bulb temperatures and how they, they kind of spread up the Mississippi River basin and you know when you start to think about impacts of heat and humidity, especially that change whether your kids can play sports, what seasons they can play sports in or if they need to, you know, not have outdoor playtime at school or if outdoor laborers can't, you know, can't work outside I mean I think those are the things that start to change what you know our imaginations hope will happen in terms of technology. I also, I think we will continue to improve technology and we will have technological advances that you know that mitigate some of some of these shifts but you know on balance you know the natural world, the scope and force of those shifts I you know I just think are going to continue to outpace anything we can do to to to blunt them. Yeah, yeah I think that's true. I mean here in in in Texas, you know the conversations I've had many of the people who are most serious about kind of getting out of here and who were most kind of spooked by the extreme heat wave we had last summer here. Were moms of kids who play football and you know they don't want their, they want their kid to play football football matters a lot here in Texas but they don't want their child to die out on the field during the summer practice and so it's like, maybe we should move somewhere else and so it is interesting these you know what these inflection points are and what these drivers are. And another thing that you get to in your book that I think is really fascinating and not talked about enough is the. I think you use the word sort of spiritual aspect but it's, it's, it's the attachment we feel to a place. I mean it's, it's, it's meaningful where you grew up it's meaningful. You know, how you feel when you walk outside and the kinds of trees there are and whether it's a mountain or a beach or whatever I mean, we have emotional attachments to places and and not only that it's like today for is a great example. I'm in Austin, Texas, we had 40 days over 105 degrees last summer. I lived a vampire life couldn't go outside, you know, except in the early mornings. And yet today it's like 77 degrees, the bluebonnets around. It's like a perfect day. It's like, why would I ever want to leave here, you know. And so the sort of psych, psychological aspects of this are I think are really interesting. And you talk about that in your book and you talk about that yourself. About whether to stay or go. Tell me about about that and about how you how we're thinking about this book changed how you think about your own life. This is the aspect of this entire project in this book, you know that I've thought about the most it's it's the beginning and the end point you know of my personal experience. And it's very personal and I, and I wanted to acknowledge that in the book in a way that lets everybody else who's having a similar experience kind of, you know, find some common cause and in, you know, there is no right or wrong answer the data can't tell you what to do with your life. This is a, you know, this is a personal decision and there's lots of other factors like your connection to land and place and for me. I love the outdoors, you know, I love beautiful places and that's been the driving, you know, decisive factor in my life about where I where I choose to live it's really been about, you know, where not what opportunities or what family I was in proximity to or what city it was but you know what my natural environment was around me and I always had this, you know this ideal. And I grew my youth that that I could always make that decision and I keep a list of you know these wonderful places that I hope to, you know, spend more time in and there's northern California and there's, you know, the Rocky Mountains and there's upstate New York and all these beautiful places. And so I think, you know, the 40,000 foot view realization and the difficult, you know, thing for me and thinking about, you know, what is climate change and, you know, what is climate migration how does it affect that is that it takes away some of that freedom that it changes the equation that in the future, you know, and maybe we're in a interstitial, you know, stage right now where I don't have to move yet but I think, you know, I think that that's going to shift and and so ultimately we're losing that luxury of choice that, you know, it's becoming naive for me or someone like me to think, you know, I could just choose to live in the most beautiful place I want to because many of those beautiful places are turning out to be, you know, dangerous or unsustainable places. And that's been, you know, that's a difficult realization. And at the same time, throughout the process of writing this book, I, you know, I found my stress relief hitting the trails or going into the woods in that very place that I valued and, you know, I had 1000 internal blogs about answering this question, you know, and showing how beautiful the trail was that I was on as if that would just sort of explain why I have not yet, you know, moved from Northern California which I portray as being in this very, you know, tense and, you know, and risky place to live. So it's this it's this constant push and pull. And, you know, I think it's very much just determined in the moment by what's happening, you know, your, your 40 plus days of extreme heat sound like a moment to me if I had that experience for me it was, you know, 2020 was a terrible fire season, but California had a lot of terrible fire seasons the last, you know, three years. We've been lucky. So it makes it easy to sort of be more complacent again or or revert to, you know, to the beauty of place but I know that that'll that'll change too. And so the book kind of explores that and you know, it tries to, to, you know, give permission for everybody else to kind of explore that too and not not feel like they're just being sort of compelled in a direction or that you know they have to choose what somebody else determines is the right answer for them. Yeah, yeah. So I want to encourage everyone who's watching and listening to this to type in some questions. I'd be happy to, to ask them and to talk about whatever is on people's minds that I'm looking at the list of questions here that there's one interesting practical question I'd like to ask you which is one of the viewers here says thus far while climate might be a consideration for people moving. It's not the primary factor, which is obviously true. So how do we encourage people to move how that's an interesting question like practically, like, is it about reforming and these incentives and the subsidies that we talked about being just what I guess it's another way of asking what is managed kind of retreat look like. I'm going to break that down a little bit, because I think managed retreat is sort of an exception, you know, or an extreme end of a broader trend that will ultimately involve a lot more people and so my first thought my first answer is you're, you're speaking I don't think that we need to encourage people to move. You know, or that, or that the country needs to have a particular agenda in terms of, you know, in terms of this larger question of climate migration I think that we need to the collective we, you know, facilitate the choices that people make and participate that people will will be moving that some will be moving and some won't be moving and in the places that that people don't move there'll be a contraction of communities and that's a whole other sort of policy set of challenges. There are places that that, you know, will require some some managed retreat and those are places, primarily along the coast which are, you know, going to be increasingly flooded and will require incredible amounts of money to defend or protect against with, you know, dumps of sand on beaches or sea walls and many many places will not be able to make that investment and so what we're starting to see now along the southeastern seaboard and in places or Louisiana coast is this, you know, managed retreat, and that's, you know, a coordinated effort sponsored by or coordinated by government in many cases that, you know, that helps people relocate. I think that's sort of a niche part of, you know, of the conversation. But mostly I think that that you know what we're talking about is the need to prepare for demographic change and that that means providing a lot of the services and infrastructure and investments that we've needed to, you know, socially for for a long time without the influence of climate change, but considering it will amplify the need for for those same investments. Yeah, I mean one of the things connected with this that you write about in your book a little bit. It's actually kind of rare in a book about climate change is not that's not about sort of, you know, energy innovation that is actually about the impacts of climate change is that, you know, there's an opportunity to make money here right there's speculators who think okay well, as you point out, you know what I think you you you you talk about a new hotter smaller more northerly America will be vastly different than what exists today, which I think is a very provocative and true statement and it's a statement that if you take seriously, and you're an investor, you know, it, you could think about how this, you could benefit from this and how you could make money do you do you feel like the given your immersion into this and do you feel like this sort of speculative aspect of this of kind of essentially batting on these changes as a as an engine of, you know, making money is going to be a powerful force in this transition you're talking about. The answer depends on on the speed at which the change happens and from an investment standpoint, that's really hard to time right because what I might be looking at a trend that takes two decades you know to to manifest and an investor might be looking might be impatient about waiting two decades for for return on their investment so there's a difference in timing but but I mean I can tell you for sure and no great surprise that you know speculators are already considering this as as an opportunity. On both ends of the spectrum, you know, effectively shorting investments in dangerous places and, you know, and going long and you know investments in in perspective growth places and the only question is timing. You know, but I, but I have a lot of conversations with, for example, you know folks in the real estate industry, or in the hotel industry. I'm trying to determine, you know, like, how long should you hold those properties, you know, in Key West, and, and when's the right time to invest in those, you know, those new ones in Detroit, and those kinds of conversations, you know, or you look at like what's happened with land farmland prices in the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes region. You know, is another sort of subtle signal. I don't think climate change is the only factor in any of those decisions just as you know, questioner pointed out it's not the only factor in migration. But it's, it's, it's there. It is a detectable signal and, you know, and I think it's going to increasingly be one. Maybe until, you know, until this country turns away from, you know, a capitalistic system. Anytime there is growth, it's going to correspond to, you know, to economic opportunity in the places where there is growth and, you know, there's two ends of the migration spectrum there's always going to be contraction on one end and growth and expansion on on the other. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I think from one of the viewers here that kind of connects with this and that I feel playing out here in Austin to which is, you know, as most people know one of the fastest growing cities in America. It's just crazy, you know, I mean things are, you know, buildings going on everywhere here traffic is insane restaurants are impossible to get into, you know, all that kind of stuff. The question is, how do you see climate change interacting with the housing crisis in the US, which is I think a really interesting intersection of two very powerful and urgent forces, both economically and politically. Yeah, I mean I think that, you know, in destination zones in particular. There's a strong correlation with housing need, you know, growth will require more housing. And it's, it will like climate change will exacerbate, you know, anything from your, your list of issues, it will, you know, if not carefully attended to exacerbate, you know, housing shortage where there is a shortage and give good cause to, you know, to racing forward with efforts to expand that housing. And I think not only to expand like the quantity of that housing but the quality of it so you know you start to think about what buildings are constructed with and and how efficient they are and what kind of insulation, you know they use and what kind of cooling is needed or is available, you know, and the proximity of that housing to, you know, to good grocery stores and food supply and transit and those are all, you know, becoming more urgent questions in the places that, you know, are growing quickly and probably will continue to grow, you know, as as climate shifts, where people live. Here's a related question that I want to just frame by saying that, you know, you write very powerfully and evocatively about some time you some reporting you did in in Central America and Guatemala and the forces that are pushing people out of places like that and into America into the US. Obviously an issue that is front and center and American politics right now. It's like, you know, again, sitting here in Austin it's all anyone talks about is the border the border the border. And the question from one of our participants here is, how did the safer places projected to receive climate migrants prepare for these inflows. What should places be, you know, be doing to to prepare for these died, these dynamic population changes that you're talking about in this book. I mean, on a on a local literal level, we're talking about, you know, how to how to receiving cities prepare for a larger growing population. You know, they need to have adequate housing and education and employment opportunities and support systems for for a larger number of people to keep them engaged in their economy and contributing to their economy or the risk is you end up with, you know, a slumification of, you know, larger urban areas and that can happen in the United States, you know, and happens in places, you know, like Atlanta. And that's what you see in large growing destination cities, you know elsewhere in the world and Guatemala City, for example. And from a geopolitical standpoint how to how to receiving nations like the United States prepare. It's a, it's a fraught question and, and it's going to be, you know, a larger and larger question. You know, I think that there's real value in investing through foreign aid in helping communities affected by climate change drought in Guatemala, for example, through investments in agriculture and water supplies and water storage and things that can reduce the flow of migration, because I learned in my reporting, you know, abroad is that when it comes to climate migration anyway, you know, none of the people that I talked to wanted to leave their homes they're really, you know, looking for for any possible way, you know, to remain where they are and so, you know, if he sees on on that desire there's opportunity to help people remain where they are. And, you know, with the with the rest is a difficult, I don't know how to forecast, you know, politically what happens with the American border only to say that I think you know the pressure will increase and we're entering an era of, you know, of permanent mass migration globally and we're entering an era of permanent pressure on the US border and answers are, you know, good answers are difficult to come by but it but it raises, you know, real questions about you know loss and damages and who's responsible, you know, to whom around and how we, you know, as citizens of, you know, of the United States or of country a, you know, feel a responsibility or choose not to take responsibility, you know, for what happens to you know citizens and in country be we're going to be talking a lot about that. I agree. Right and that's, you know, the heart of the whole thing with a green climate fund and you know how much the US is not participating in that you know I mean we can't even get funds for Ukraine much less for you know adaptation in, you know, Guatemala so it's a very political moment in America right now a very, very difficult question to shift to another question from one of our participants here is he or she writes. One thing you write about is that once the real estate insurance risk equation tips, it may be too late as no financing will be available. When will that happen in Florida. If I could tell you exactly when, or if anybody could then those speculators would be, you know, would be out there doing acting on, you know, on that information. I don't know is, you know, that's the dynamic that the economists and experts that I talked to describe to me but the timing, you know is really unknown but the, you know, the pattern is that, you know, if you if you have growing risk and that risk isn't bought by an insurer that doesn't want to, you know, protect a property then banks, you know, will cease loaning on those properties, which will grind the real estate market, you know, theoretically to a halt, because unless you're buying cash and you're, you know, affluent enough to, you know, to maintain a property as a as a trophy property or to own an independent of financing. You won't be able to buy or sell. If the banks stop engaging in, you know, in properties that that they think are too risky to to get paid back on on their investments. I mean, I mean, you know, it is hard to see how you have 30 year mortgages if you don't have home insurance, right. I mean, but do you see any any way around that. I mean, I mean, it seems to me that the way the insurance is going that there isn't going to be, except that very maybe extreme prices 30 year mortgages from for all intents and purposes and insurance available for these 30 year mortgages. So, so I mean, what are the possible scenarios here. I think it's going to be, you know, a little bit of a push and pull for for a while. And that's partially a negotiation between industry and it's partially just sort of, you know, you know, our cultural reaction to to the changes. You know, my book really comes down hard on subsidized insurance for the ways that I think it's blinded people to risk but that subsidized insurance also plays plays a role here and it's an important role and it protects a lot of people. You know, who maybe have lived where they live for a very long time and need to remain there and need some economic stability and so. I think that that will continue to play an important role. I don't think my personal opinion that that those programs should continue to expand in a in a in a way that sort of blindly encourages growth but that they can serve a role in stabilizing communities that are affected now and sort of easing this transition. I think what's happening with California in its insurance market and you know with wildfire risk in particular is kind of telling of where we're headed. The dynamic is basically that, you know, insurers are threatening to leave the state because the state insurance commission will allow them to raise prices, but those insurers would be willing to ensure properties if they were allowed to charge high enough rates that they feel like are commensurate with the climate risk. They will ultimately be allowed to raise rates and so the cost of insurance will go up a lot before it disappears that I you know I think that insurers who are withdrawing insurance now might offer it again when they're allowed to raise costs, and then there's a lot of progress towards intermediate steps that can mitigate so that providing insurance isn't a black or white decision for an insurer or for a homeowner that your rates or your ability to get insurance are improved if you take mitigation measures to cut down trees and shrubs around your home that reduce wildfire risk, for example, or you put a fireproof roof on your on your house, then you can get insurance and so there'll be a similar sort of tug, and you know, pushing, pushing pull, you know in coastal regions and other threatened places, you know around the country. And there will also be places like so much of Florida, which can't build seawalls and really can't protect, you know, an enormous amount of of its land which is ultimately going to flood that won't be able to play that game for for much longer that will be forced to you know by circumstances to just retreat. Yeah, what an interesting thing that's happening to and then insurance that this happening literally to my wife and I here in Austin is, you know, we have some lot we have a small house with big trees. And the insurance company wants us to get rid of the trees because of the risk right of damage to the house. We're like no these trees are fabulous they keep the house cool, you know there's obviously many reasons one wants to have trees but rising insurance rates they're pushing harder and harder for us to remove these things so it's counterproductive from the kind of climate, you know and and personal sort of perspective, but you know it's all about sort of reducing these risks, and that that is reshaping Austin you know, to into this sort of treeless world that is, you know, tragic in my view, and what I want to bring up one other point that connects with this that you talk about the very end of your book that I think is very profound and you and you hint at it. I don't mean to say you don't. I don't mean hint as in a negative I mean you, you, you, you suggested at the end and I think it's a very poignant way to end the book which is, you're having a conversation with Ellen who who you opened the book with who is deciding whether or not to stay or leave and you're wrestling yourself with that. And at the end, Ellen, I, you know, decides that she's going to stay but in on different terms, right, that she isn't she ends up renting right her family ends up renting, but the idea that I wanted to have you articulate is the way she suggests and you suggest at the end of the book that the whole idea of home. He's going is being transformed by this that I think she suggests or you suggest in the end about this sort of almost sort of more nomadic idea that we're going to stay here for a while but this idea that we're living in this house or living in this house and my grandchildren will live here and this is, you know, this is my spot on earth and the spot of my family on earth. That's an old world idea that is not going to survive. You know, in this new climate world we're, we're, we're plunging into. Can you just talk a little bit about that because I think that's a really big idea. You know, I think that what Ellen is describing in that case, you know, is coming to term slowly with what it means to live in uncertainty. And, and that that's our new world for all of us. You know, if there's, if there's any one thing in my view about, you know, the climate crisis and the era that we're moving into it's that we can't really predict what will happen and we don't know exactly how it's going to change what we're going to do in, in all the ways and in home and economy and opportunity and family. And so, you know, part of, you know, we can have our stages of, you know, of denial, you know, and grief and acceptance as we sort of, you know, learn more about the implications of climate change for our lives and and I think that one of the things that we arrive at, you know, the end of that process is accepting uncertainty and that's what, you know, that's what Ellen talks about and it's, and it's similar to my own, you know, thought process about about where I live, which is resigning to the idea that might not have a perfect answer right now. And that there is no sort of finality in either a decision that somebody might make to move or decision that somebody might make to stay. You know, and she describes, she's just really just musing at this point in our conversation. You know, she describes the like maybe we just have a more nomadic lifestyle and I think what that means is, you know, maybe for people who can. And this is obviously, you know, a privileged option for some people but you know maybe you go and spend wildfire season on the east coast and you come back to California in the winter time when you know the hills are green and lush and I think you know that's what that means for her. Or maybe we try and stay because we love it here but but economically I'm going to divorce, you know, my financial security from this climate transition, because I'm not going to invest in it in a home and keep all of my, you know, my savings in real estate I'm going to rent, for example. There are other kinds of like little subtle tweaks and, you know, and little things that that each of us can begin to do and are going to begin to do to kind of mitigate these circumstances. But it gets back to what I was saying, you know, earlier about my ideal, the freedom of choice to choose, you know, choose where I live and and for me, you know, that's what that's what home has always been about it's it's a place that I come from and then it's a place that choose and and in the future I think we're talking about uncertainty and the reduction of choice, you know, that's what Ellen's expressing. Yeah, yeah. And as you just pointed out, what you were in your responses now and also in your book. You know, you point out that this is a those of us who are lucky enough to be able to make that decision right that have the financial well being and you say in the book migration is a measure of mobility mobility is a measure of wealth. And so, you know, that's a that distinction between people who have the freedom to go live somewhere else during wildfire season versus those who don't is a very profound divide in in this whole conversation, not just about migration but about climate in general right. It's a profound divide in terms of how people are affected, first of all, because I think, you know, the poorest Americans the poorest people in the, you know, in the world, and often ethnic minorities as well, you know, are disproportionately bearing, you know, the brunt of the change itself. And then we'll have the least the least mobility. What the data projects is the, you know, it'll be kind of an upper middle class segment of Americans that have the most flexibility to move that they'll be you know young families who have energy and opportunity to go and work in a new place, and there's a lot of wealth to make that change, you know who can do it that that a large part of the conversation needs to be about those that are sort of trapped or not mobile and what happens to them and the places that, you know, might might shrink or cease, you know, cease to grow as climate changes and then you have the very, you know the wealthiest of the wealthy, who are those who can continue to live on the coast of Florida without insurance or self insured or keep a home, you know, keep a farm in the country and not even as they continue to live in Los Angeles, you know, and that kind of opportunity. Right. One of the things I like also about your book is that it's skirts. It doesn't skirt it doesn't even. It articulates in a different way this question that a lot of people have about like, are we doomed or are we not, you know, which is unfortunately the sort of binary that a lot of this climate conversation gets trapped into because you really do talk about, you know, mobility and the dynamics of that. We have a question here that kind of connects with that from, from one of our participants here that is, you know, simply, you know, how do we maintain a positive outlook while acknowledging these climate risks and these challenges I mean how. How, how do we think about this in a or how do you think about this in a way. You know, that doesn't give into despair. I mean I hate the word hope because it's like, you know, I hope Santa Claus brings me you know a nice sled for Christmas kind of thing it's a very passive, the way it's often used but still, I think this question of like thriving in this uncertainty is a really big and important powerful question you talked about it a little bit but can you address that a little bit more. Obviously, you know something I think about, and talk about a lot, you know, I think there's a couple levels to the answer but you the first on the sort of a general psychological approach where I am personally with this with this process now is is realizing that you know this is the life we've got and it and we just talked about uncertainty and, and this era is, you know, is chock full of uncertainty but it's also, you know, a slow moving change and there, I just don't find a lot of personally, you know, a lot of utility in, you know, in despair which kind of means not doing anything or you know sort of an idealistic view I just, it's not a very purposeful existence and so we live in the environment that we have and this happens to be the uncertain and rapidly changing environment that we live in and, you know, in the scale of geologic time, you know, it's a sliver of a moment. But another, you know, really optimistic point to me is, you know, that what we, you know, we I explore this in the book but you know what we do right now makes a huge difference in the scale of change that we're talking about so there is, you know, there is no binary there's no black and white, you know, if, you know, we pass a certain date and then 50 million Americans will have to move as a result of climate migration or will suffer, you know, sea level rise. I base a lot of the reporting in the book off of, or a lot of the ideas in the book off of global models of the changing human habitability niche and, and it's this global study that suggests, you know, two to three billion people on the planet will slide outside of this, you know, climate niche and 160 million Americans will slide outside of this, this climate niche. But that same research talks about what happens if we just cut emissions and we cut it fast and we still have a chance to do that so, you know, this is the, you know, save the world from climate change speech but, but it actually just makes a huge difference if we could, you know, stick to one and a half degrees Celsius of warming than that two to three billion, you know, person estimate drops by 50% you know the number of people that are not in zones of a planet that are too hot to live in drops by, you know, three quarters drops from 22% to 5% of people on the planet. So, we can cut our emissions and we can support policies and politicians, you know, who try to do that. And there's opportunity in that. And then, you know, there's, there's opportunity and change in the United States to, you know, moving might be disruptive and the thought of being forced out of the place you love is certainly, you know, disruptive. But, but there's going to be plenty of growth and plenty of change that's, you know, that's positive. And, you know, in other parts of the country will we all parts of the United States all parts of the world will obviously, you know, be affected by climate change and face disasters and flooding and, you know, and, you know, more and more events like that but according, based on the primary threats that I analyze in the book which I think are, you know, the biggest ones, you know, there's parts of the country that are relatively safe from those threats and they're going to see, you know, increases in crop yields and increases in economic opportunity and cities may be, you know, booming in the future and in those parts of the world and there is, you know, there's plenty of fun to be had I guess is what I'm trying to say. All right, well that's a great way to end this. We got to wrap up. Thank you for this. Congrats on a great book. I hope everybody buys it reads it tells their friends about it. It's really an important book and I wish you all the best and thank you to New America for for hosting this conversation.