A journalist and author of an upcoming book on climate migration is casting doubt on the idea that Wisconsin can serve as a “climate haven.” 

Last month, Republicans in the state Legislature proposed a bill that would incentivize those fleeing recent natural disasters in the United States to settle in Wisconsin. 

The legislation would give anyone who was displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires or Hurricane Helene in North Carolina a $10,000 income tax credit if they choose to move to Wisconsin. The bill’s authors said it could help address the state’s workforce shortage, especially in health care. 

Another possible incentive: as climate change accelerates natural disasters, some cities in the Great Lakes region are advertising themselves as “climate havens.” They’re defined as locations that are better insulated from the effects of climate change due to factors like an abundance of fresh water and immunity from hurricanes and rising sea levels. Madison and Duluth, Minnesota are among the cities that claim to be an attractive destination for climate migrants.  

But climate journalist Alexandra Tempus doubts any place could safely be considered a “climate haven.” In a recent piece for The Guardian, Tempus points to data that shows 99.5 percent of congressional districts in the U.S. experienced at least one federally declared major disaster due to extreme weather between 2011 and 2024.

Tempus recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that it’s unlikely a tax incentive would draw many people to Wisconsin.

“If lawmakers seek to make the state hospitable to disaster survivors, there needs to be radically transformative investments in public infrastructure and services here across the board,” Tempus said. “A $10,000 tax credit is a drop in the bucket for people who have potentially lost everything and moved to Wisconsin from out of state.”

Tempus joined “Wisconsin Today” to discuss where people fleeing climate disasters move and why.

The following was edited for brevity and clarity.

Rob Ferrett: Would this tax incentive lure people to a state like Wisconsin? 

Alexandra Tempus: Possibly. But I would argue that most people have considerable ties to where they already live. Even if my house has burned down or been destroyed in a hurricane, a lot of folks are going to have kids in school, parents in a nursing home, established careers or certain legal requirements that require them to stay in place.

So, the contingent of folks who have the time and resources to pick up and move out of state is smaller than you might think.

RF: You’re working on a book on this topic of how and where people move. If they’re worried about climate disaster, what do we know about how far they tend to migrate?

AT: Most people who are moving because of climate-related reasons, it’s one of several reasons they’re moving. We know that they tend to stay within their country’s borders.

There was a study that came out in 2023 in Environmental Research Letters that took a look at government buyouts given to people whose homes were destroyed in natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. … [It] found that about 75 percent of them moved within 20 miles of their previous residence. 

[That’s] not far. Folks are moving across town. They’re moving to one county over or maybe to a nearby city. It makes sense that if they have local ties keeping them around, they’ll find a place with ample housing and accessible services.

But that doesn’t necessarily require them to move very far. We also know that being safe doesn’t necessarily require them to move very far.

RF: You’ve been going to communities that have been affected by disasters. One of your starting points was here in Wisconsin, in the Driftless Area in the southwestern part of the state. What kind of stories did you find there?

AT: I first went to the Driftless region back in 2018 to explore the history of Soldiers Grove, which relocated its whole downtown back in 1978. … It has, over time, become a local influence.

Thirty years later, after the 2007 and 2008 floods, the neighboring village of Gays Mills also decided to initiate a relocation project where they purchased a plot of land on a hillside out of the flood plain and allowed residents to voluntarily relocate there. 

After the 2018 floods, I went back a couple of years later to see what the recovery was looking like. I was surprised to find that several other villages, including the village of Rock Springs, were initiating relocation plans. This means knocking down buildings and infrastructure in the floodplain … and moving infrastructure and buildings and housing to land that is higher elevation. 

We might not think of it as migration. We think of migration as these long journeys. But this shows us how we’re going to reconfigure where we’ll live over time and how we’ll make choices about where to build and where not to.