Climate Change Migrants
Published in the EarthSphere Blog
A tall sign pole on the north corner at the intersection of 14th and Washington streets in Oregon City bears a sign for “Free Beer.” The sign belongs to the Oregon City Brewing Company. Below the sign lies the brewery and a tasting room. Behind the brewery, out of sight from the main road, is a large, covered outdoor patio with plenty of tables and benches and about seven or eight permanently parked food trucks. All and all a pleasant place to have one of the excellent beers brewed on site.
The beer is not really free, but you can get some free samples as tasters when deciding what to order. However, the dozens of local brews on tap make ordering a daunting task. I eventually settled on a Pioneer Pale Ale and retreated to the patio. Ceiling-mounted heaters took the cool edge off a crisp autumn afternoon, and I sipped my beer with every intention of answering several emails on my iPhone. I normally mind my own business. But in this instance, I started listening to the conversation from a wayward-looking pair at the next table. I didn’t consider it to be eavesdropping since they could see me sitting four feet away.
Nick looked to be in his early seventies, and Gretchen was somewhere in her fifties. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that sported streaks of green and purple, which clashed a bit with her red-and-black plaid flannel shirt. A pair of reading glasses hung from her neck. Nick’s thinning gray hair and several days of gray and black stubble fit in well with his jeans and worn leather jacket look.
I couldn’t actually tell what type of beer they were drinking, but I fancied that Nick was sipping a slightly Hazy IPA and Gretchen was halfway through a Red Ale. Normal chit-chat would usually bore me into tuning out of their conversation, but I couldn’t resist listening when Nick mentioned the recent hurricane.
“It’s gone. Every damn bit of it,” said Nick. “Ian took me to the cleaners. Everything I owned was strewn across the street. Hell, one of my couches was sitting on my neighbor’s foundation pad.”
“Jesus, Nick! So, what made you come to Oregon?” Gretchen had one of those faces that naturally radiated her immediate emotions, and I could hear a mixture of concern and curiosity in her voice.
“One of my daughters lives in Gladstone, so I had some family out here. I figured this was as good a place as any. The upside is that I am spending some quality time with my granddaughters. Cindy, my daughter, is letting me use her travel trailer while I look for a place to live. I’ve been over at Clackamette RV Park for five days now, but they will only allow me to stay a maximum of ten days, so I’m still looking.”
“Have you thought about the Gladstone Mobile Home Park? I’ve lived over there for several years. Also, the Tri City Mobile Home Court is right next door. In fact, I think someone moved out from a lot around the corner from me.”
Nick paused, and I could tell he was interested. “You think they would let me rent the lot and put Cindy’s travel trailer on it until I could find something a little bigger?”
“I don’t know. You would have to talk to Brad. He manages the park.” Cindy cocked her head to the side, and her ponytail shifted positions. “Where exactly did you live in Florida?”
“Fort Myers. We took an almost direct hit.”
“Did you have flood insurance?”
“Nope, Gretchen, I didn’t. It had just gotten too damn expensive. Mabel, my wife, and I let it lapse about five years ago when we were going through a difficult financial period. She was pretty sick, and the medical bills were piling up. She passed the next year, and I just never renewed. The property is still worth something, so I think I will get some money back if I sell it. I’m never moving back, though. I’ve got nothing there. But hey, I was luckier than a lot of others. I got out alive.”
“I can’t believe you stayed through that storm.”
“Oh, I didn’t. I packed my SUV and got the hell out of there two days before it hit. I may not have much money, but I’m no fool. I have a degree in environmental science and understand enough about hurricanes that I wasn’t about to stay. Hell, when I was packing, one of my neighbors came over and asked me why I was leaving. His take was that the weather forecast put us on the edge of the cone. He interpreted that to mean we were on the far edge of the storm and would probably only get a mild wind with some rain.”
“I read about how people misunderstood the hurricane forecast cone.”
“When I explained to my neighbor that the cone represented a 67 percent probability zone for where the center of the storm might track, I could see his eyes go blank. I commented about how that left a 33 percent probability of the center of the storm tracking outside of the cone. At the second mention of the word probability, his jaw went slack, so I finally asked him why the cone gets bigger as it goes northward. He thought it was because hurricanes spread out as they got closer to land. I wished him luck and was on the road within an hour.”
“Did your neighbor make it through the storm?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
Gretchen was pensive for a minute while they sipped their beers. “Climate change is scary,” she finally said. “The Florida Governor said the forecast was wrong, and that’s why so many people died.”
“He will say anything if it benefits him. But, in this case, he simply lied or showed his ignorance about what the forecast cone actually means. I’m sure the MAGA masses went along with whatever nonsense he was spouting off. It wasn’t the forecasted hurricane cone that got so many people killed. It was the cone of ignorance radiating out from the Governor’s Office that did the real damage.”
Gretchen downed the last of her beer. “Well, you will have to make yourself a home here now, Nick. Let’s go back over to the park and talk to Brad. We will tell him you are just another climate change migrant, like me.”
Nick gave her an inquisitive look.
“I will tell you over another beer the next time we’re here.”
The Climate Change Migrants stories used real science and events combined with fictional characters.
