On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America

ProPublica environmental reporter Lustgarten (Run to Failure) delivers an urgent examination of how the U.S. will be affected by migrations driven by global warming. As the “best living conditions on the North American continent... jump dramatically northward,” Lustgarten expects to see an influx of climate refugees from Central and South America, as well as the mass movement of people within the U.S. as parts of Arizona, Texas, and Florida become increasingly inhospitable. Not everyone will be able to afford to move, Lustgarten warns, pointing to reports that found FEMA rejects Black applicants’ requests for aid at higher rates than white applicants’ and awards them fewer dollars per incident even when requests are approved. Lustgarten provides a nuanced account of how myriad factors intertwine to fuel migration, as when he details how drought and disease exacerbated by climate change have devastated Guatemala’s crop yields in recent years, worsening poverty and driving residents to seek opportunities in the U.S. The author also provides poignant portraits of such affected individuals as Chris Bunet, a Choctaw man whose family had lived in Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles Indigenous community for five generations until Hurricane Ida caused devastating erosion in 2021, forcing him to relocate to a less idyllic plot 40 miles north. Readers will be unnerved. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)