Why Is Madison Considered a Climate Haven Going Forward?

Frederica Freyberg:
In 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 & Now” next generation intern Hannah Ritvo has this story.

Jessica Mederson:
That 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.

Hannah Ritvo:
Jessica Mederson left Texas 12 years ago to escape the heat.

Jessica Mederson:
Everybody in the world wants to be in Austin and I loved it a lot but I hated the heat.

Hannah Ritvo:
Mederson is among many who have left their homes to adapt to a changing climate. Over 3 million Americans have Hannah Ritvo already moved due to climate change.

Sumudu Atapattu:
If you look at the U.S. alone, last year there had been $1 billion weather disasters almost every two weeks on average.

Hannah Ritvo:
Some of these migrants could be headed to places called climate havens.

Steve Vavrus:
A climate haven is the idea of a place that’s a refuge or a safe spot from the impacts of climate change.

Hannah Ritvo:
Madison is routinely cited as one of six climate havens around the United States.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
Steve Vavrus is the state climatologist and co-director of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.

Steve Vavrus:
Maybe just as important is 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.

Hannah Ritvo:
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Vavrus says potential climate migrants should be aware of Madison’s own increasing climate extremes.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
2010s were Wisconsin’s wettest decade on record by far.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
He says the concept of climate havens started about six years ago.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
And it’s a debated notion because there are many reasons that people move.

Steve Vavrus:
The cost of living, the quality of education, the availability of housing. This is a big issue in Madison with high house prices and rents.

Hannah Ritvo:
And not everyone can escape disaster.

Sumudu Atapattu:
There are communities who are 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.

Hannah Ritvo:
Sumudu Atapattu is the executive director of the human rights program at UW-Madison.

Sumudu Atapattu:
I look at the link between human rights and environmental issues, especially climate change.

Hannah Ritvo:
Atapattu says there’s 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.

Sumudu Atapattu:
Some communities are being relocated as we speak. Some communities are awaiting relocation, and people are moving.

Hannah Ritvo:
She says climate change is a global problem with local impacts.

Sumudu Atapattu:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
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.

Steve Vavrus:
Can their infrastructure handle a lot more people? These are things that communities need to be thinking about anyway.

Hannah Ritvo:
Some cities have already begun promoting themselves as climate havens.

TV announcer:
Lake Superior, big enough for everyone.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
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.

Steve Vavrus:
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.

Hannah Ritvo:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Hannah Ritvo in Madison.

Frederica Freyberg:
Hannah Ritvo is graduating from UW-Madison and completes her work with “Here & Now” this week. We thank her for her contributions and wish her luck on her next endeavors.