In 1988, academics predicted millions of people would move from Texas to Michigan by the year 2030.
“Detroit Free Press · Fri, Sep 30, 1988
Scientists predict Great Lakes could become an oasis
BY BOB CAMPBELL
Free Press Environment Writer
OAK BROOK, Ill. — How’s this for a 21st Century headline:
Greenhouse effect swamps U.S. coastlines, scorches Sunbelt.
The secondary headline:
Millions migrate to temperate, water-rich Great Lakes region.
The possibility isn’t farfetched, say many scientists who attended a Great Lakes conference on global warming that concluded in Oak Brook, Ill., Thursday. The conference ended with a commitment by top U.S. and Canadian climate officials to recommend to their governments a global pilot project to study climate warming in the Great Lakes region.
Studies presented at the conference projected that the gradual accumulation of carbon dioxide and some other gases in the upper atmosphere may cause a four- to nine-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase in the region as early as 2030.
That could cause a decline of about two to nine feet in Great Lakes water levels and trigger major economic, environmental and social change, but many scientists say that — on balance — other parts of North America would fare worse.
Coastal regions would face flooding as polar ice melts and the oceans rise. Meanwhile, the Sunbelt likely would face severe water shortages as the climate slowly gets hotter, drier and windier, said John Topping Jr., president of the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C.
“What seems likely, based on preliminary data, is that the Great Lakes region will be the least badly affected of any region in the U.S. or Canada,” Topping said.
The Great Lakes, the world’s largest body of fresh water, would be the region’s trump card, said Topping, former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s office of air pollution and radiation programs.
In addition, warmer temperatures and sunnier skies in the Great Lakes region should make it more attractive to people, especially retirees, who have migrated to Sunbelt states in recent decades, he said.
Ken Dare, chairman of the Canadian Climate Program Planning Board, said: “The Great Lakes region is likely to become a major growth center. It’s just going to be too damned hot to live in places like Texas.”
