Climate change could make Chicago a sweet home for migrants

Once the place people sought to escape because of its weather, the metropolitan area could beckon as a safe harbor from climate change.
CASSANDRA WEST


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Western and Southern coastal states in the U.S. have long lured those seeking the good life. “California Dreamin' ” wasn’t just a hit song. It was a real aspiration for millions. The West Coast state, along with Florida and Arizona, with their year-round warm weather and scenic views, were idyllic escapes from the frigid, brutal winters in places like Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Buffalo.

But a changing and unpredictable climate could now make many would-be cold-weather escapees reconsider where they choose to live. And it could bring more people to areas with more of a natural immunity to wildfires and rising sea levels. Places like Chicago.

Yes, the Windy City area could become a destination for climate-forced displaced persons, or “climigrants,” as some are referring to people on the move from wildfires, floods and droughts in other parts of the country.

Cook County recently showed up as No. 7 on a top 10 list of places climate change migrants are heading, a study conducted by online moving platform HireAHelper showed. And according to data analyzed by ProPublica, the most habitable climates will shift northward as people seek to abandon locations because of “wet bulb” temperatures (extreme heat plus humidity), large fires, rising sea levels, declining crop yields and weather-related economic damages.

Climate-related moves can happen quickly. A million people moved from the Gulf Coast within the first two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, notes Seth Schultz, CEO of Resilience Rising, a global consortium working to achieve a sustainable future. “Things are changing around us and we have to do things differently to adapt to the environment we’re in, but for a lot of people in the world, the reaction to this is not adapt. It’s to move,” Schultz says.

From 2008 through 2021, an estimated 10.5 million people were displaced by natural disasters in the United States, according to the Global Internal Displacement Database. For example, 2,476 people were under a mandatory evacuation order due to the Pipeline Fire in Coconino County in Arizona as of June 14, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.


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See Crain's complete climate migrants coverage here.


Because of the Chicago region’s “strong natural resource base,” Jason Navota, a director in the plan implementation and legislative affairs division at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, says it could “experience some in-migration due to climate” and welcome new residents. “With wise use and management of these resources, we can certainly accommodate quite a few more people.” But that comes with a caveat, he adds. “It would be unwise if we simply were to expand the footprint of the Chicago region out beyond where it currently exists and not take into account all of the disinvested areas of our region that really could be reinvested and revitalized.”

Before any major population influx, Navota says, “we need to do some real serious planning and stick to some of the recommendations and policies that we come up with, so that we don’t waste these resources. So that we don’t overuse them.”

Several local municipalities, including Chicago, Evanston, Park Forest and Northbrook, have or are implementing their own climate action plan. The village of Oak Park is drafting one. The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus’ “Climate Action Plan for the Chicago Region,” released in 2021, encompasses seven counties and 284 municipalities that are home to 8.9 million residents.

Strikingly, the plans don’t prioritize climate migration. Rather, they’re focused on greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation.

“We don’t specifically address climate migration at a regional level," says Edith Makra, director of environmental initiatives for the caucus and co-author of the plan, which is designed to empower local governments to take action on climate.

“We don’t have (rising sea levels and wildfires) in our face," Makra says. “Our relative insulation from the extremes of climate change make us a little slower to think forward about climate (migration). Perhaps the next iteration of our climate action plan will more squarely address climate migration.”