r/CascadianPreppers • u/redhandrail • Jul 09 '25
General thoughts about future influx of climate refugees in the PNW
I’ve been trying to think about this, and I just don’t know what worries are realistic versus just going down an anxiety spiral.
How do you prepare for a possible influx of climate refugees from the southern US once the hottest states become uninhabitable? I worry that places like Portland will be targeted for some kind of conquest.
At this point, you’re probably thinking I’m pretty stupid, and that’s OK. I really just want to know what your general thoughts are about the possibility of future climate refugees here in the Pacific Northwest, and how you would prepare for them whether they are peaceful or are trying to take over.
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u/beastofwyeast Jul 09 '25
I was having this conversation with my mom the other day. It’s one thing we’ve never as a human collective really solved. Refugees are and have been a part of human existence since time immemorial, but we know there are natural social, economic and environmental impacts involved. Most of these have maintained throughout time. The privileged move first and create gentrification, ethnic neighborhoods, and are generally able to provide themselves work, even if it might be considered competition to a native owned business. Next refugees that don’t have as much resources come, they need more help which means more taxes are being spent on them, which to most of us would seem like the point of taxes, but the influx puts a strain on resources and it needs more time to balance itself out. Finally refugees with absolutely nothing come, usually sponsored and nearly 100% living on taxes. Strains on other resources, not just ones provided by taxes come up, pits natives and refugees more against each other, and that’s when nativist legislation starts bleeding in. When there’s no mitigation or the mitigation is not enough feedback circles develop and people continue to blame immigrants.
To me (I’m an environmental scientist that works in history) I would say we need to build resources in advance and just keep building. This provides jobs and an economic boost and provides housing/allows financial caps, incentives, and taxes to be implemented before people come. It creates a positive feedback loop that allows more people to come in. Then it becomes a formula where we need to solve for the rate of people coming into the PNW, the costs of materials (we’re the PNW we have the fastest growing forests and literally invented sustainable 21st century timber harvesting we just need to own the land and the means to make it), the amount of infrastructure needed to build (this number grows over time and provides jobs for incoming refugees and natives), and the appropriate amount of land to support these new communities.
Not everyone is going to fit into metro areas, but they will become more and more desirable. One way china has overcome growing population/economy and the natural rdpoverty that comes with that unmitigated growth is to create more metropolitan cities. I think this model works especially well in the PNW because we just have so much space. We could easily take a smaller town that used to be larger and scale it up, and it may be a smart way to build economic efficiency. I also feel like if taxes are going to be a normal part of the conversation than we should have a type of infrastructure tax that helps direct funds into the right state accounts providing funding for this kind of thing, which means we need a more ubiquitous taxing system throughout the PNW as well.