Madison resident Jessica Mederson said she remembered nights in Dallas, Texas, when temperatures didn’t drop below 90 degrees.
Many parts of Dallas are classified as urban heat islands, places where a combination of natural warm weather and concrete sprawl can send temperatures skyrocketing. Urban heat islands in Dallas can reach 10 degrees higher than other areas. Due to climate change, the mean temperature in Dallas is expected to increase by five degrees by 2050.
Mederson, who moved to Madison in 2012, is in a self-classified group of “climate migrants” — people for whom climate shapes their decision to leave their home. In a world where populous coastal states like Florida and California face drastically increased rates of climate disasters accompanied by spiking insurance costs, the Midwest begins to look less like flyover country and more like a destination location in its own right, experts have said. Wisconsin is no exception.
“Dallas is like one big paved parking lot at the bottom of the Great Plains,” Mederson told The Daily Cardinal. “Not only was it hot, but the heat would radiate up from all these black parking lots. The year we left, because it was so hot and dry, there were wildfires that were spreading through central Texas and encroaching on the outskirts of Austin as we left.”
Mederson, a practicing attorney, spent three years in Dallas before moving to Austin, which she described as slightly more temperate but still “far too hot.” Finally, she moved to Madison, calling herself a “partial climate migrant” to the area, as she also made the move to be closer to family.
Though about a third of U.S. adults said that if they were to move in the next year, it would be due to climate change, most people who relocate due to climate also move because of other factors, according to Sumudu Atapattu, director of the Global Legal Studies Center and professor at University of Wisconsin Law School.
Steph Tai, UW Law School professor and Associate Dean for faculty in Environmental Affairs at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, told the Cardinal the Midwest may see more flooding due to greater precipitation caused by climate change, but its effects will be less severe than in warmer regions where rising sea levels threaten coastlines.
“We’re in a cooler climate overall, so warming from our cooler climate won't be as horrible as, for example, warming from the climate of Arizona,” Tai said.
Even when climate disasters don’t drive people out of their communities directly, climate change can exact an emotional toll for people facing frequent close calls as well. Evacuations due to wildfire warnings in California or hurricanes in Southern coastal states could become regular events for residing families, and if power systems fail in some Southern cities, heatstroke fatalities will occur.
When Mederson’s home HVAC system broke down in Dallas, for example, she described feeling intensely worried that her young children would overheat. Southern infrastructure is also not equipped to handle sudden cold snaps, another result of climate change.
“The houses are not insulated like they are up here, and you don't have the jackets and the cold weather gear,” Mederson said. “I felt much more vulnerable down there in the winter because when it did get cold, Texas was not prepared for that at all.”
What is being done?
A number of factors influence how counties and cities should best accommodate and integrate climate migrants, including but not limited to the migrants’ native languages, the climates they are immigrating from and the scale of the migration itself, which might necessitate school or infrastructure expansion, according to Atapattu.
The Wisconsin Legislature recently introduced a bill in the assembly that, if passed, would allot a tax credit to those relocating to the state from the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year or Hurricane Helene in 2024.
Though anecdotal evidence exists to show that U.S. residents, especially mobile young professionals, are likely to consider climate change when deciding where to settle, destination locations are still highly dependent on kin networks. Mederson, who runs a podcast centered around climate change, said she hopes people will be incentivized to move to places with the infrastructure to support them as climate change worsens.
After Mederson moved to Madison, she joined the Wisconsin Initiative for Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), described on its website as a “statewide collaboration of scientists and stakeholders… to evaluate climate change impacts on Wisconsin and foster solutions.” Mederson is a member of two WICCI committees discussing how to help local communities prepare for climate change and climate migration.
“While there's not a ton of data yet, it's obvious that there are going to be more people migrating up here as climate crises become worse in more vulnerable parts of the nation… I'm very happy I moved up here, but I think [we need] resources for people who can’t move with so much planning and intention,” Mederson said.
Although Mederson had the financial resources to move successfully from Texas to Wisconsin in around six months, she recognized that others might not have the opportunity to do the same.
“Often the people who have more money, while they're still suffering, are suffering less than people with fewer resources,” Mederson said. “What can we do to support both individuals and communities with less resources to find a way to move that they both can financially afford to do and that doesn't destroy their entire sense of community, of home?”
New administration changes demonstrate a ‘disregard for the rule of law’
Recent action by the Trump administration froze current infrastructure standards in place, meaning that buildings will no longer have to meet as stringent of climate resiliency requirements in order to receive federal funding.
Tai, whose research specializes in the consideration of scientific evidence in developing standards, said that this action might cause new developments to be less resilient to climate change, negatively affecting the housing market, office infrastructure and roads’ resistance to climate change effects such as flooding.
“To me, this new FEMA development is horrific, because it's basically saying we're not going to take into account the scientific information,” Tai said. “It puts the onus on the developer, if they want to have a resilient building, to develop their own. That's a lot of resources they might not have. Rather than putting federal resources into it, [President Donald Trump's administration] is basically making it a more free-for-all kind of environment, and developers have incentives to cut costs on their buildings.”
Atapattu agreed that the new administration’s laws, both climate-related and refugee-related, pose humanitarian problems that will be difficult to repair.
“We are talking of an unprecedented situation where there seems to be a disregard for the rule of law, for the international obligations, frameworks and institutions in place,” Atapattu said. “So it's going to be a very sad situation for refugees and people who are fleeing violence, fleeing disasters.”
