Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Where You Gonna Run To?

The first time I heard the phrase, “Environmental Refugee,” I suppressed a giggle.

It was 1990 and the speaker was a fairly dramatic friend who had fled Iowa’s agriculture-infested water, and settled near Ozark National Scenic Riverways in south Missouri. I was accustomed to his rather flamboyant overstatements, but the word “refugee” took me by surprise. Weren’t refugees always outside of the United States? Could you be an American and a refugee?

Tom had become a preacher of the gospel of clean water, a protector of Ozark streams, well known for administering quarterly tests on the waters and announcing the tests loudly, but was he a refugee? Refugees, I thought, were the battered products of political disruption or, maybe, religious persecution. They lived in camps until the chaos was over, and then they went home. They were fragile and their places were temporary; Tom was sturdy and his place in the Ozarks was permanent and there was nothing random about his status — it was a result of his careful decision-making.

I’m not laughing any more. Besides flight like Tom’s from dirty water, or flight like my neighbors’ from our community’s CAFO-stinky air, we can add a long list of environmental disasters causing people to flee: hurricanes, floods, drought, fire. All the tools in nature’s toolbox have come down on earth in recent years. In my own family, a daughter and her family fled the California fires in search of cleaner, less smokey air and are now twixt and between, dwelling-wise. More on that in a minute.

It’s hard to find numbers on how many Americans have been “displaced” — that’s the giggle-free word for refugee that we use for Americans. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, reported 150 families displaced by the “derecho” that flattened towns in their county. Tropical storm Sally created 18,000 “evacuees.” That’s another non-giggle word we use for American refugees. In 2020, it’s been hard to judge how many people have fled from disasters and where they’ve gone because COVID has changed the usual patterns—nobody’s being packed into the Astrodome like during Katrina in 2005. Dispersed among friends, family, hotels and Air BnBs, it’s harder to count the “displaced”.

After Katrina, 15 years ago, the scene at the Astrodome was appalling because of the nation’s complete unpreparedness and lack of leadership. Today, the flight of victims from weather events has been normalized. People are more likely to leave their homes in the path of disaster rather than stubbornly stay home when the winds, flames or floods get near. We are getting used to having emergency supplies, ready to grab and go as we run to the car.

My daughter and her family—husband and two little boys—left California in their SUV packed with a few necessities, drove for two days, arrived here in Missouri and landed at the father-in-law’s. As transitions go, this one was amazingly smooth. They were in a house they knew well, in a safe neighborhood, surrounded by loving friends and family. And, October in Missouri is temperate and lovely, so even the weather cooperated.

The boys, somewhat accustomed to school-by-zoom because of the pandemic, were able to get into a routine quickly. The time change even worked to their advantage, meaning that the 8 a.m. school start in California became 10 a.m. in Missouri. Work schedules for the parents had already been disrupted by COVID, so they are used to spending their work days on-line or on their phones.

But their lives have been terribly stressed, as is true of all who flee environmental or climate disasters. Worries about the people and things they’ve left behind, stress about how they’ll get things and services here, and fears about the cause of the displacement and what they’ll find when they return home. The boys miss their friends, their soccer teams, their cats, their normal lives.

Where will they go from here? This is the fourth year the wildfires have wreaked havoc in California. Some of the family advisors, like me, tell this young family that these fires have moved from an inconvenience to a recurring fact of life and it’s time to cut their losses and move permanently. “You have lots of choices,” I say, because they do.

As I say that, though, I think of the millions of families raising kids in refugee camps around the world, camps that have become permanent. These are folks without choices — family, friends, workplaces that will take them in like they’ll take in my kids. All of those families, making such wrenching decisions — surely massive human displacement means massive uncertainty for the future of the planet.

The signs are clear. We must find more sustainable ways to live. That said, fires, flood, drought, windstorms, other natural disasters are beyond our power to change. Environmental refugees are now a fact of life.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2020

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