They're *all* going to move North. Probably straight to Seattle. I doubt we'll be gloating much then.

Barely a century between Dust Bowls, it seems.

Clarification: by "all," I was including the Southerners. No racism here!

Beautiful.

The 15 year old bean queen I mentor shares your sentiments about increasing the number of Mexicans in the region.

Guys, not everyone in the South supports the GOP or the DINO Democrats that seem to get elected and re-elected ad nauseum.

The lumpenproletariat is very strong here, and most folks who vote really don't do much research or thinking before voting GOP. They are scared to death that some liberal Yankee is going to yank their gun or their Bible outta their hands. They are terrified that brown-skinned people may actually be treated as equals to them. They are horrified at modernity and at the idea that their "old time" values are outdated.

Sadly, they won't wake up in time. But I hope that my friends in the Northwest at least remember that over 40% of Georgians voted Democratic in the last presidential election. We're a minority, but we are hanging on. Don't thow us Southern progressives out with the bathwater, eh?

It isn't even necessarily good for the north, our agricultural products are already being forced to change, New England for example is getting worse and worse crops of maple syrup because winters aren't cold enough for the maple trees anymore

Interesting how across the middle of the Great Plains there's a straight, stark division between the +25 and -25 regions. Maybe if you have a field that straddles the line all your crops will die to the south and thrive to the north? Or maybe this is nonsense.

@ 8, you just beat me to it.

HA HA HA
Your end of the Titanic is sinking, not mine!

Sigh. Feel better having laughed at the hicks now? I'll try not to kill your buzz by pointing out the economic instability that pretty much every nation and region is going to be plagued by, due to increasing unpredictability of weather patterns. Or the fact that you'll pay for their suffering, too.

@6

Thank you, Jonathon for pointing out the obvious to Mr. Savage. As a new resident of Savannah, I've cast my first ballot for the local - winning - progressive team.

Just another Blue Dot in a Red Ocean.

Why is Florida on that map? The sea level change is going to completely wipe it out.

i live in florida and i'm moving to seattle. i can't take the heat anymore.

Poetic justice is lovely; but this isn't it. Turbulence and disruption will not stay in neat little geographic boundaries. Plus, we get lots of our food from the South too.

Mayhap if our politicians gave a little on the god and guns issues, there'd be more liberals elected in the South, hmmm?

damnit! i like living in florida.

Jonathon @6 The Yankees only came once for your guns and never for your bibles. Are you implying that 60% of Georgians might vote for secession - in order to thwart the liberal Yankee? Timing is everything.

Great, the southerners will bring their "values" to Seattle. Just fucking great.

@18- i am a southerner and i do not possess these "values" you speak of. not all of us are dodge-driving rednecks. many of us are eager to get the fuck out of here.

i personally will cheer if florida does happen to sink. hopefully it will take the elderly population down with it.

This is pretty damned shitty, Dan. Southern politics may leave much, much, much to be desired but this sort of finger-wagging, can't-wait-to-tell-you-"I-told-you-so" attitude is just so gross. Doing some victory dance at mere mention of a dooms-day scenario makes you no better than the worse conservative dipshit to swagger out of the backwoods. Sure, point and criticize about poverty levels, where taxes actually go, and urban sprawl, but quit it with this endless rejoicing at another's suffering, pending or otherwise, it's a bit beneath your intelligence. You know, this is part and parcel with this blog's drought coverage, yet I, at least to my knowledge, don't remember anyone jumping for joy when Southern California was on fire (drought related!), no matter how they vote (San Diego!!). So fuck you, buddy.

We’ve written before about how the South has a reputation for electing far-right Neanderthal politicians who don’t care about much beyond God, gays and guns

Yeah, you know what? Fuck that, fuck John, and fuck you too, Dan -- and your urban archipelago. Significant portions of the industrial south -- a manufacturing crescent that starts round Washington D.C., dips down into northern Mississippi and Alabama and sweeps back up into the Kansas -- got royally and publicly fucked by trade globalization policies that Clinton negotiated, pitched to Congress, and signed into law. And the Dems were taking money from Chinese-backed lobbyists the whole time. You look at job trends in that area between 1996 and 2000, you can actually watch the entire region's economy disintegrating.

And what do we get from that? Goods manufactured in China, without environmental regulations, and shipped to the United States -- adding thousands of product miles to everything that used to be manufactured more cleanly in that southern rural manufacturing belt before Clinton came along and pissed all over them. So who's contributed more to Global Warming now, you smug motherfucker? That's why the vote in the South swing right. If you look at a county-by-county map of which areas went from Clinton to Bush in 2000, it's exactly that manufacturing crescent that switched over.

And just by the by -- I don't know what you think is going to happen when the South East is completely depopulated by global warming, but here's a newsflash: there's no wall between here and Mississippi. When that region becomes uninhabitable, those people are going to move. And they're not just going to move to the Northeast, to live with people they've always had a contentious relationship with. They're going to move WEST. They're going to move here. So you better learn how to relate to these people now, Dan -- or at least to appreciate that they are people. Because in 20 years they're going to be flooding into your neighborhood, lowering your property values, and competing with your son for jobs and education.

It's karma.

I agree.

F em.

"Jim they're dying.."

"LET them die!!"

But, Judah, are they going to be polite?

To the South a little Bible Quote: "You reap what you sow" So start sowing that crop you planted for yourselves.

Their politics have lead them to deny global warming, deny civil liberties and frankly spew hate to anyone not white, straight and Christian. Yeah, there are some people who do not share those values but they do not make up the majority in the South.

But some people (like me) left backward thinking parts of the country to get away from that mentality and the thought that backward thinking people could start to move into the land of reason, diversity and science is a terrifying prospect. Even if it is a decade or two away from happening.

If you want to know what your new neighbors are going to be like; take a look at where they used to live and see what they did in their old neighborhood: You will get a really good idea.

New Deal Democrat:

Who owns the corporations that lobby for strip mining in the South? Who owns the corporations that profit from industrial farming of tobacco in the south? Who owns the corporations that manufacture the inefficient cars they drive in the South? Where are the vast majority of financial services concentrated in this country? Who profits from the environmental destruction of the South?

It's funny to me that Northern liberals have nothing but sympathy for Mexicans whose country an labor are being exploited by giant (northern) corporations bent on making a profit at any cost, but when it comes to southerners it's all, "Fuck 'em." You bend over backwards trying to look at "the big picture" to give credit to "women and oppressed minorities", but when it's some bubba with a gun rack getting fucked out of the land his family has lived on for 300 years and having his back yard turned into a slag heap for some multinational mega-corporation, you can't be bothered to look past the end of your nose.

Basically, y'all're at least as shortsighted and hypocritical about this as Southerners supposedly are about race or culture. Y'all're still a bunch of fucking bigots. You're just bigots with different loyalties.

I looked at the map and noticed that Canadian agriculture was expected to decline by as much as 5 percent. It must be because they have gun control, single payer health care and they allow gays to get married. Serves the bastards right!

@20- Glenn Beck on CNN said the following in regards to the Calif. wildfires: “I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.”

Yep, if they'd just loved America a little more, this never would have happened.

@21 - I agree with you 100% about Clinton, China, and globalization. But, turning to the GOP to save the day? That's a laugh.

I suppose George W. Bush has provided many unemployed Southerners with new opportunities winning hearts and minds in Iraq, but does that count?

By the way, I've never heard of a mass influx of people into an urban area lowering property values. Supply and demand makes the opposite true.

catastrophic climate change will push ALL of america towards fascism, not away from it.

start hoarding water filters, ammo, seeds, and firewood.

you're going to need it.

By the way, I've never heard of a mass influx of people into an urban area lowering property values.

During the New Deal and, particularly, during the manufacturing shortage of WWII, millions of poor African Americans migrated from the Deep South to Northern industrial centers like Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit. This resulted in the phenomenon commonly referred to as "white flight" which included plummeting real estate values and the creation of giant sprawling suburbs and exurbs (so here again, you can thank Northern racism for a lot of the transit hassles -- and resulting greenhouse gas emissions -- faced by northern industrial cities). Detroit is a particularly stunning example of this, but there are many others.

But, turning to the GOP to save the day? That's a laugh.

And who are they supposed to turn to? Given a choice between Democrats who will screw them economically and don't share their social values and Republicans who will screw them economically but do share their social values, why wouldn't they vote Republican? If your answer is "global warming," let me again refer you to the above entries. Republicans may be the ones who are denying global warming now, but Democrats have done plenty to encourage it. There is certainly very little in the way of a tangible record to suggest that voting Democrat would save the South from an environmental catastrophe.

Oops. Missed a close blockquote tag there.

I grew up in Arkansas, and it's worth noting that state was and still is a major Democratic stronghold. The governor is a Dem and the state legislature is controlled by Dems. All federal reps except for one are Dems to the best of my knowledge (they're Dixiecrats, but still). Electing Democrats in and of itself is not the cure for what ails the South.

For progressives, we have to recognize that our views are the minority in just about every part of the country, but that there are decent, sane people everywhere--even though it usually doesn't seem like it.

And no, people are not going to be moving to Seattle or the rest of the West Coast en masse from the South. The difference in the cost of housing is already just too extreme.

We're gonna need Southern climate refugees to fill all these mega-churches we're building.

@31 - So-called "white flight", and the falling real-estate prices that followed were, as you mentioned, a result of people leaving the cities for the suburbs. Unless the bubbas are going to chase the blacks out of Detroit, I don't see history repeating itself there.

And, I can bash Democrats and Republicans all day long, so you're not going to sway me there. Dems selling everyone out? No surprise there. Happens all the time.

But Republicans' social values? What values are those? Fear-mongering and discrimination? Nice!

You are correct that the Dems aren't gonig to save the South from environmental disaster. Hell, the Greens wouldn't either. It's too late for that. Florida, North America's sand bar, will be gone in 50 years regardless of what happens now.

After reading Judah above I am excited to have people from the south move up north. If Judah is an example, the seem the friendliest warmest people in the world! I am sure they will be super nice to our blacks, women and gays.

Their migration is going to be a huge national family reunion! I cann't WAIT!!

*sigh*
I moved South from Chicago to experience a different climate and culture. What I've found is that Northerners and Southerners aren't really all that different. As one commenter pointed out, there are a shitload of megachurches going up North of the Mason Dixon, and I don't think it's because Bubbas are heading North. There are a lot of peoplr who drive Hybrids in my town, too. The truth is that there are a lot of really cool, really progressive people here, and I guess the suggestion is that- what, we should all run away? It's hard being a blue island in a red sea, but does that mean we should all leave?
And need I point out that Iowa, Kansas, and Ohio are not Southern states? What about Colorado? Utah?
This whole conversation is just a distraction from the real issues. I get the joke, Dan, I just don't think it's funny.

Hahaha! Stupid bible molesters!

If Judah is an example, the seem the friendliest warmest people in the world! I am sure they will be super nice to our blacks, women and gays.

Of course, I was born in Oregon and raised in Seattle, but don't let the facts interfere with a good story.

Jonathon @6: No doubt you are right. It's just hard to have respect for a group of people who reelected Haley Barber, you know?

As a native born Floridian, who escaped north in the mid-1970s, I have argued for 30 years that we should saw Florida off at the border, tow it out to sea, and sink it.

I'm from florida...florida is a raceist cash obsessed hell-hole...and I'll never go back
but sometime i find the so called "progressives here just as bigited if not more so...to poor whites

judah said it better then I could.....but there's a reason why we dont trust the goverment to have a monopoly on firearms....there authoritarian and ppower hungry,,,the threat of civilen inserection is #1 on any goverments threatlist...why do you think rainbow is on the domestic terrorist list.
why we belive in god so fiercly? because conditions around us are so severe that the only hope is god.
why where raceist? because the powers that be stand more from us hateing each other then uniteing together...and all those snide northern liberals that put down "white trash' trying to make ends meats off of 10,000 a year without resorting to selling crack while eleveting the black man who abandons his family and go's on to sell crack