This headline makes me laugh: "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?"
If you were genuinely worried about climate change — as opposed to fake worried or trying-to-look-like-a-good-person worried — you would go through with it. And I'm saying this as someone who was genuinely worried about global warming in 1984 when I chose to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I believed what I read and that included the idea that the southern United States was going to be unbearable in 10 years. I thought I was getting the jump on the inevitable migration. And now here I am, old and still observing the climate from my remote northern outpost, reading, "Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change/But would you actually go through with it?" at FiveThirtyEight.
Excerpt:
UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight has fixed its "Yooper" gaffe. The passage quoted above is replaced by:
Excerpt:
But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that the “Yooper” is a place you should move now....The Yooper is a place?! To call the U.P. "The Yooper" just underscores your aversion to going anywhere near there. (A "Yooper" is a person who lives in the place they call the U.P.)
But despite the occasional trend story about coastal millennials moving to places that seem better positioned to ride out the ravages of climate change, there’s no real evidence that the Upper Peninsula is attracting new residents due to its climate prospects.....Live for today. Isn't that why we're having this climate change in the first place? These people who are "worried about climate change" are really basically just worried about today, and worrying about climate change is something that is done to try to look good today. And you'll be looking your best looking good looking worried in someplace that's warm today.
That’s partly because real estate investing works at a different pace than climate change does.... The maps that show the Upper Peninsula winning against other parts of the country are forecasts of the year 2100. “But why does it matter that [the value of the land] will go up in 100 years?” [said a professor of economics]....
When people talk about the best place to move to avoid climate risks, he thinks they’re usually thinking about places that are currently too cold becoming, well, more like California and other parts of the country in which Americans are willing to take economic losses in order to enjoy today....
UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight has fixed its "Yooper" gaffe. The passage quoted above is replaced by:
But it’s one thing to look at these maps and start dreaming of your climate condo in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s another thing entirely to say that it is a place you should move now....They haven't hidden the gaffe, so I give them credit for taking the hit openly:
CORRECTION (Sept. 20, 2019, 11:00 a.m.): A previous version of this article used the word “Yooper” to refer to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was an incorrect use of the word. The U.P. is the place. The Yoopers are the people.
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