Building in Harm’s Way: America’s Population Growth Pattern is Making It More Vulnerable to Global Warming
- Nathanial Gronewold
- December 31, 2024
- Forum Papers
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An NPG Forum Paper
by Nathanial Gronewold
December 2024
ABSTRACT
The United States has been experiencing one of the fastest population growth rates in the developed world for decades. The US is also considered to be a nation acutely at risk from climate change and the impacts that it will bring, and America’s vulnerability to global warming is only getting worse. These two trends are related. Amidst all the talk of climate adaptation and directing societies to build up greater resilience to climate change, the US is moving in the opposite direction, expanding its population and accommodating infrastructure most aggressively in regions at greatest risk of future climate disasters. We’re already seeing the results of this utter lack of forward thinking; for example, note the recent string of hurricanes that devastated some of the fastest-growing areas of the Southeast.
Most responsible federal government agencies and environmental organizations already recognize this troubling trend and understand the massive threat it poses to life, health, societies, and the economy. Their solutions are greener building codes, sustainable infrastructure, and better emergency planning to cope with the disasters that will inevitably come. Here’s another solution: end population growth, and then throw it into reverse.
BAD WEATHER
The Philippines is routinely hit by typhoons; this is hardly a secret. This Southeast Asian archipelago nation known for beautiful beaches, scuba diving, and retired Western expats is certainly no stranger to violent, extreme weather. But 2024 has been an exceptionally stormy one for the islands, even by the Philippines’ standards.
This autumn, the Philippines was hit by five separate typhoons and one tropical storm in one four-week period. Four of these typhoons hit the country in a span of just ten days, one after another in quick succession. Notably, each storm made landfall at about the same point: the east coast of the island of Luzon.1 Tropical Storm Trami soaked the northern Philippines with torrential rains in late October. Typhoon Kong-rey followed and went on to wreak havoc on Taiwan. Then came Typhoon Yinxing, then Toraji, followed by Usagi. Then Typhoon Man-Yi struck in mid- November, leaving hardly any time for residents to recover from the prior three storms.
Bam, bam, bam, bam—four storms slamming that nation in under two weeks. A stunning image published by NASA shows all four storms making their way across the western Pacific Ocean as if under marching orders, one of the storms having already passed over the Philippines while the other three are neatly lined up to take their turns.2 The Japan Meteorological Agency, the group charged with monitoring typhoon activity in the Asia-Pacific Rim, said they had never seen anything like it since they began monitoring and recording tropical weather in the region in 1951.
We in America haven’t been paying much attention to this—likely because there’s been so much other news vying for our short attention spans. But make no mistake, we’ll all be paying attention when the exact same thing that happened in the Philippines this year happens in Florida in the future. This year, Florida already experienced something similar, only on a much smaller scale. Consider it a preview of things to come.
Hurricane Debby hit Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coast in August. Hurricane Helene hit Florida’s Gulf Coast again in late September as a Category 4 storm. Helene ripped up parts of Florida and devastated portions of Georgia and North Carolina, destroying communities in western North Carolina that lay nowhere near any coast, shocking everyone. Then Hurricane Milton hit Florida in October. That makes three hurricanes hitting Florida in two months, so a milder run of weather compared to what the Philippines went through this storm season, but it’s only a sign of things to come.
Texas could be the next state to suffer a string of devastating storms in one season. I was there when Hurricane Harvey hit; that was an experience I’d rather not repeat. Maybe North Carolina will be hit again and again, or Georgia perhaps. The meteorological phenomena behind the creation of these storms work the same in the Atlantic Basin as they do in the Pacific. However, the social responses are, to date, drastically different.
Folks in the Philippines are keenly aware of the reality of climate change and the fact that these storms are occurring with greater frequency and getting more deadly. To the extent that they can, Filipinos are busy flocking to fast-growing cities further inland or on the west coasts of the main islands (news reports say that Manila, the capital, came through the typhoon season relatively unscathed). They are trying as best as they can to move away from the path of greatest danger.
We in the United States are doing the exact opposite.
Though many of us accept that climate change is a reality and that its impacts are only getting worse, the US population has been inexorably shifting away from places relatively sheltered from climate-fueled extreme weather toward those parts of the country that are without question the most vulnerable to global warming. In other words, the US population has been surging in places where it really shouldn’t be, considering the risks.
Florida is slowly but surely shrinking in geographic size as sea levels rise and ocean chop erodes coastal land every day. Meanwhile, the state has been growing by leaps and bounds in population terms. For more than a decade now, Florida’s population has boomed as people flood in from other parts of the country and overseas. More storms will come, and Florida’s summers will get hotter and hotter, but still, people insist on clamoring for their little slice of the Sunshine State.
Texas is another booming state, the fastest-growing state in the nation in pure gross numbers. Hundreds of thousands of former residents of the East and West Coasts have pulled up roots to move to Texas, specifically the Gulf Coast metropolis of Houston. More still have landed in the Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin inland corridor. Hurricanes, tropical storms, and wildfires are greeting them, but population forecasts still see more and more people coming, and I think this is an accurate projection.
Americans have been flocking to North Carolina and Georgia, as well, mostly to urban centers, located inland away from the coasts. Residents of the Northeast are no strangers to hurricanes; think Hurricane Sandy in 2012 (which I also had the misfortune to experience). But I don’t imagine anyone moving from the Northeast Corridor ever seriously considered the possibility that Atlanta, Charlotte, or even Nashville, could be wrecked by any one of these storms. They should consider this a very real possibility now that we see what happened to Asheville, North Carolina, and the areas surrounding it when Hurricane Helene made landfall. Asheville was one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, and even in the whole country. Helene smashed that city into pieces. Asheville’s cozy, isolated mountain setting didn’t keep it safe from a hurricane….Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.
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