“Duluth, Minnesota: The Potential Future Climate Refuge for Climate Migrants”

In the far north of the United States, Duluth, 86,000 inhabitants, is known for its snowy winters and the almost ocean breeze from the immense Lake Superior. Today, the city is being talked about as a potential future “climate refuge”.

Christina Welch recounts what made her leave the vineyards of Sonoma County in California for Duluth on the boardwalk that runs along the thawing lake, on the surface of which slide blocks of ice under a radiant sun.

In 2017, the first fright, a fire is dangerously approaching his neighborhood. Then in 2019, while she is in Duluth to explore the city on the advice of a colleague, a fire forces her parents to evacuate.

“It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back,” she told AFP.

The wildfires, which experts predict will worsen with global warming, are also among the reasons that prompted John Jenkins nine years ago to leave the beaches of California for the icy shores of Minnesota.

“The air is cleaner. The water is among the best in the world. It’s just very clean, beautiful, immaculate,” he says in the café-restaurant he bought and renovated.

Christina, 40, and John, 38, have therefore turned the page on their Californian life and settled in Duluth – also the city of birth of Bob Dylan. Admittedly, it is sometimes minus 30°C in winter. But they have no regrets.

John came with his wife. Since then, he has had two children and several members of his family have taken the plunge.

Christina and John are among the pioneers of a fledgling trend that could grow in the coming decades: that of “climate migrants”. Those people who take climate change into account when choosing to move from one place to another – in addition to real estate prices, quality of life or job prospects.

Pure water

As for the buzz around Duluth, the story begins a few years ago with Professor Jesse Keenan. This specialist in the articulation between urban planning and adaptation to climate change examines the regions towards which future climate migrants in the United States could head.

It identifies several cities: Buffalo, Detroit, Duluth among others. Without being impervious to climate change, the latter is a historically industrial city which has benefited from investments “from Minnesota to try to promote a sustainable economy” and has an “extremely affordable” housing stock, he told AFP. .

Above all, thanks to Lake Superior, Duluth has plenty of water. And “fresh water is the new oil”, according to Mr. Keenan.

Media are enthusiastic about the concept of “climate refuge”. On the spot, the majority of the inhabitants questioned say they are ready to open their arms wide.

“I think it’s wonderful!” exclaimed Lezlie Oachs, a 65-year-old retiree. But these people have to “get used to the fact that it’s cold almost all the time,” she smiles.

“Climate Optimists”

On the side of the authorities, however, the tone is cautious. Mayor Emily Larson “politely declined” to speak to AFP, but recently said bluntly that she was “horrified” when her town’s name started circulating.

“I have the impression that we are still putting on our oxygen masks. We are not ready to help the passenger next to us, and yet the climate is pressing us to do so”, she summarized during of a public lecture.

And she would find it “cynical”, she explained, that her city is growing by focusing its “marketing strategy” on people fleeing climate change.

Jesse Keenan does not hide his “frustration” with this speech.

“Guess what: people will come” anyway, he says.

For him, “the challenge is simple: either the city prepares in a way that respects the environment and social equity, with suitable housing and transport; or its development will be done in a traditional way, with an extension towards the periphery and a massive use of cars.

And it is possible to act upstream to avoid gentrification – the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods – he argues.

Jesse Keenan is a firm believer that “Duluth is a place for climate optimists”, those who believe it is possible to adjust to the upheaval of the world as we know it.

But he warns: if the adaptation to newcomers “is not done well, it could make things worse”.