Destroyed Communities & Climate Migrants: Climate Change Upends Small Towns | Amanpour and Company

Our home and business are south of Paradise. The speed of climate change changes over the last ten years have been eye opening. We lost 300, large, 2nd growth, ponderosa pines on our place a few years ago to a beetle kill made possible by record heat and drought. We’ve never had to run our evaporative cooler at night before, the air is clean so you can open windows, but we did last year for two weeks. Car insurance and electricity have doubled, food is up by 1/3rd, insurance for home and business buildings has quadrupled. A fire in 2022 burned 127 homes in our town. 40% of folks had no insurance. Many of the folks who lost their homes were retirees. Building materials have increased in price by 1/3rd. And, I’m getting phone calls and letters from vulture, corporate investors who want to profit off of the pain and struggles of individual citizens. And here is the kicker. Climate change and the resulting droughts, heatwaves, fires and floods, is caused by all of us burning fossil fuels that are produced by a handful of unethical companies and countries. Exxon and the Saudis are making record profits. Yet your grandparents who just lost their homes of fifty years are left paying the bill!

I live in western Oregon, where the summers are longer and a lot dryer than usual. There are a lot of trees, especially conifers, in forests where the floor is covered in plant life that can really add fuel to our fires. Even though the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire was well east of me, I still smelled the smoke and had ashfall on my car for days. Seeing the destruction, firsthand, was a sobering and sad experience. I'm also 68 years old and believe that us old folks need to care more for our children and grandchildren than ourselves.

"Disillusioned: Benjamin Harold" explains that current generations are putting the bill that past generations have done: ignoring science, redlining on housing, expanding the suburbs (more black asphalts over natural dirt) with racial intentions, and keep building homes and roads (asphalts) inside the mountains and coastlines with increasing urban heat island. Over the century with industrialization, many real estate industries and business have ignored this and kept on pushing and still pushing it. Modern nature don't have parties (democrats, independents, or republicans) and react to how all of us behave in this earth. People must not depend on technology and engineering but re-study and reexamine how earth has been and how to take care the earth.

Listen to scientists. .not lobbiests and partisan Hannities

We moved to the Great Lakes in '18 as part of our climate action plan. And we know we beat the rush.

Sadly, I think that many people lack the means to make the improvements to their homes, such as the red roofs which could potentially save them. Even removing trees from the property that are too close is very costly.

13 million is wishful thinking it will be ten times that number displace in the next decade let alone the end of the century.

Beavers are essential to the environment. After many years of culling, we now know better.

Ducks Unlimited in early 1900s first goal was to bring back beavers...to bring back endangered ducks.

The lighting on Hari is non-existent!

Oh that poor limp plant!

Will the environmental changes in housing areas stop D.E.W. from destroying an area?

??? Whats with the Red roofs? Red tiles or colourbond roof?

I'm definitely concerned and planning to move to higher ground, and inland in the next 5 years.

Small town infrastructure for roads and drainage, budgets depleted just trying to repair erosion from extreme storms in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Ohio.

Now, we can question: Is places like Spain becoming hostile for human life? Spain has had extreme heat, extreme droughts and now their coastlines are impacted with extreme marine heat. So any plants grown in the area are under drought. Any species in the ocean are reported to die, like dolphins, fish, clamps and even seaweed meadows. This is the current trend in many areas around the world. Lack of water will be getting much worse due to losing mountain glaciers. And due to heat (1C rise take 7% of the humidity). And the rains that comes more rarely has more water to pour as a devastating heavy rains that are followed with floods. We can question also: How long we do have until climate is erasing entire human race?

There needs to be a short term (emergency action plan), intermediate (upgrades to infrastructure) and long (relocate) plans to mediate these issues. Climate change will not stop and our coastal, arid and flood prone places WILL NOT be liveable in the long term. The comment on lack of insurance should be a RED FLAG given that the insurance industry has studied the science and business end of the issue - money is their priority and they know a lost cause based upon science! As such, short term upgrades (roofs, landscaping, walls, etc.) may get us to the next event, it is not a long term solution. There needs to be a phased approach to mediate the issue while planning is completed and implemented. What has happened is that business interests (re developers) understand that some politicians lack the will to resolve issues given that they may not get elected - voters will not like being told that their house will not be rebuilt for the 6th time and developers will not like being told that they cannot keep sucking money from government backed insurance. Plan, Plan Plan needs to be added to the Location, Location, Location mantra.

Great talk, but damn, that guy's fiddleleaf fig is *suffering*.

My small town family? Some people can see the good where I see someone else.

The whole planet is effed