This question is for those of you who live in the south, humid or otherwise. These heat waves are getting crazy. This morning, the youtube news is showing California burning. Now, California has always burned. To an extent. The trees and bushes are adapted to fire. But not these fires. These fires are now hotter and more destructive then any time in history. This is something I studied in my forestry classes and growing up in California. But seeing how things were trending, I made a bee-line north. I love California, but I don’t love the climate change. I believe if you can make it out now, you should. If things keep going as they are in California and many other places, I wouldn’t count on air conditioning and cool water to keep you alive. And losing homes to fire, with the insurance companies rapidly fleeing the prone areas, what do you expect to do when you lose everything?
But those who choose to move to hotter and more humid areas to homestead, WHY? Do you not see what’s going on? Do you you not realize those are the places that are going to get the worst of it? Fire, heat, the wet bulb effect, and more intense storms are threats. Other less thought of threats include formally tropical only mosquito-carried diseases popping up. Check out the first category 5 hurricane in recorded history so early in the season this last week going to town in a path of destruction. Do you really expect to survive that long term? It’s bad enough in the north when we get these record breaking heat waves. Is ‘cheap’ land worth the discomfort and danger these kinds of cheap lands provide? Maybe you think you are somehow better then nature and can conquer it all. Maybe you just don’t care about surviving long term.. or are in a deep state of denial.
Let me know if you have thoughts on this because it leaves me scratching my head. Don’t roast me, I am generally curious and concerned.
Climate Wary Homesteader 