A review by j_schoen
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle

5.0

This book was pretty depressing, not gonna lie, but I still found it to be a compelling topic. The most terrifying fact for me is that this book was published in 2023 and since that time, the same disasters discussed in the book have already occurred AGAIN (extreme flooding in North Carolina/SE U.S. and bad fires in California). More and more people are going to be displaced by these types of events, and this book took a detailed look at several past examples, looking at broad trends as well as individual stories. This book did a good job of highlighting the human element, that these are people’s homes, lives, cultures, and entire communities that are being affected. It was interesting to learn about state and federal involvement, as well as all the issues with insurance. It’s not a simple issue to solve, especially since millions will be affected in the years and decades to come, all over the world.
“What do we owe to each other? This question is less about the ethical obligations of any one individual to each other and more about what we as a society owe to those on whom the impacts of climate change will fall the hardest.”