The Great Displacement | REVIEW
The Great Displacement is a compilation of reports that describe concrete ways that climate change is affecting the U.S. and provides lenses to be able to think about these changes culturally, economically and humanely.
Jake Bittle’s tour of America showcases the wildfires of California, the sinking Florida Keys, Arizona’s disappearing river water and the increasingly inevitable flooding happening throughout America. At the center of these shifting environments are people. Rich people, poor people, resilient people, vulnerable people.
This book is a piece of journalism that recounts first hand experiences of individuals, families and communities disrupted and displaced. And as climate change continues to snowball and spiral, Bittle argues that displacement isn’t something that we can avoid, but surely, only something we can manage.
Insurance companies, FEMA, corporations, land developers, city councils and real estate agencies are among that cast of institutional players that set the stage for these tragedies to play out. In California, the fires happen so frequently that fire insurance agencies can no longer afford the payouts and so they charge astronomical premiums or simply don’t offer it at all. Neighborhoods in Virginia built on flood plains are sold to unsuspecting home buyers. The real estate agents or prior homeowners have no legal obligations to divulge this information about deluges in buyer beware states so people purchasing their first homes or forever homes end up inheriting a stick of dynamite.
In Louisiana, the Verdins family’s indigenous ways of life are threatened by the erosion of their land. Oil companies began the erosion with their drilling over a century ago, and oil companies are finishing the job through carbon emissions and rising sea levels.
A farmer in arid Arizona worked his whole life establishing cotton crops unaware of the increasing water scarcity his daughter would have to navigate when she takes up the stead.
And the list goes on and on.
I like books that deal with heavy topics because I prefer uncomfortable truths to sugar coated optimism. And this is one of the biggest issues of our time. It is too enormous for any of us as individuals to reverse.The way we can create effective strategies to survive and adapt isn’t to ignore it though. That’s how we get blindsided. The only way to move forward is to talk about it and talk about it specifically. Concretely. And to an uncomfortable extent, so that we may answer critical questions.
What are the roles of institutions in a climate-changing world? How can we prepare and mitigate the worst of the upcoming effects? How can we assume responsibility for what we can change while holding the most harmful actors accountable? How do we treat climate refugees both in and out of the country?
The U.S. isn’t even getting the worst of it. The global south is taking the brunt of what the global north has emitted. People are migrating. The world is shifting. And in an age of extreme temperatures, it’s all the more vital that we stay cool, calm and informed when we need to. And when we see the path forward, we must become our own force of nature.
Highly recommend this book.
