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| Lamoille County, Vermont was named the safest U.S. county from climate change in a recent study. But that region is not immune from climate change. Photo is of severe Lamoille County flooding a decade ago. |
As reported in Quartz, the research concluded that of all the counties in all the United States, six of the top 10 "safest" counties are in Vermont.
Before you get too excited, the study didn't look at every risk from climate change. Even in "safe" Vermont, extreme weather events like floods remain a serious hazard.
The climate safety study was done by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine Data on the relative risk in each county by the Rhodium Group, an independent data analytics firm. This data was combined with information from several academic studies, says Quartz.
According to ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, the relative safety of all these United States counties was compiled using the risks in these categories: Heat, wet bulb temperatures (which measures humidity), farm crop yields, sea level rise, large wildfire risk and economic damage. The study looks at expected safety from climate change around the year 2050.
In this study anyway, the top four safest counties are all in Vermont. In order, they are, Lamoille, Orange, Franklin and Essex. Orleans County was number six, and Grand Isle County was number seven. The other "safe" counties were in upstate New York and northern Maine.
The least "safe" county in the United States is Beaufort County, South Carolina. Five of the least safe counties are in Louisiana. No surprise there, after Hurricane Ida.
The unsafe counties are subject to heat, humidity, sea level rise and economic damage, as you might imagine.
As Quartz notes, Vermont is uniquely geographically situated to blunt some of the effects of climate change. Winters are cold, but getting warmer. That's a net positive, according to the study, but tell that to the Vermont ski and winter sports industry. Those sectors will surely suffer.
Though summers are getting hotter in Vermont, we're far enough north so that in general, the most dangerous heat waves would be shorter and not as bad as in points south. But as we suffered through recent hot summers, we're still subject to nasty heat.
We're obviously also immune from sea level rise, since there's no coastline in Vermont.
We can get forest fires here, but the climate in Vermont in fairly wet. And generally getting wetter. So the risk of western style immense forest fires is on the low side.
That increasing precipitation trend in Vermont exposes one shortcoming in the studies. Extreme weather events are a rising danger in the Green Mountain State and not fully accounted for in the otherwise excellent ProPublica/New York Times Magazine effort.
Vermont is terribly prone to floods. We've seen that a couple times in southern Vermont just this summer, and it's turning into a frequent problem.
Take Lamoille County, the "safest" place in America from climate change in this study. This county has been declared a federal disaster area ten times in the past decade. That's mostly from floods, but severe winter storms, thunderstorms and high winds have also been at the root of these disasters.
So yeah, by some important metrics, Vermont is an island of stability as climate chaos whirls around us. But don't get smug about it.
Here's another issue: Currently, Vermont needs more youngish types moving into the state to replace an aging population and tight work force. So at first, people coming to Vermont to escape climate change might be a good thing.
But what if things get really serious and a huge influx tries to move here, more than we can handle with our housing shortage and iffy infrastructure? Not only do we need to make our Vermont roads, buildings, highways and such more climate resistant, we might need to start thinking about an influx of climate refugees, too.
This might not be fiction anymore.
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