Summary: QUICK SHOW SUMMARY: Author of "American Exodus" Giles Slade sees humans joining plants & animals in migration toward Poles. Paul Beckwith on alarming new Arctic melt science from NASA. Dr. Nathan Phillips on gas leaks in Boston and Washington D.C. Grab it now. READY TO SCRAMBLE TO THE POLES? It's hard to imagine. Will you decide to move, to leave your home, because of climate change? Maybe relentless heat becomes too much. Fires could burn you out, of floods come so often there's no money to rebuild. It might be just one too many awful storms. Crops could fail, goosing food price ridiculously high, busting the local economy. Animals, plants and fish are already moving either toward the Poles, or to higher ground. Humans, for all our technology, may not be exempt. Some of you are already wondering if that's in your future too. Our first guest says it will happen. That's Giles Slade, author of American Exodus. He's talking about millions of Americans, and Latin Americans, seeking greener pastures, or at least cooler ones, in Canada and Alaska. The Canadians may simply move even further north. The same future has been predicted by British scientists Sir James Lovelock. He sees the ocean-wrapped British Isles become a destination point for North Africans, and people from Southern Europe, as great deserts form there. Look out Scandinavia and Siberia, for the same reasons. This may not happen this year, or even this decade, but we'll talk about it. Then climate scientist Paul Beckwith returns with a startling new NASA study about the Arctic Ice melt. That change is producing about one quarter of all warming. How will that change science and climate activism? Worried about methane leaks in the Arctic? We wrap up with another new survey of natural gas leaks in major American cities, this time in Boston and Washington D.C. Measurement show our big cities are big methane sources. That's something the "natural" gas salespeople don't tell you, when they promise to be better than coal. Ready? I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) AMERICAN EXODUS - GILES SLADE Maybe after a cold winter, some gritty, sweaty summers sound pretty good. As long as the power stays on, with air-conditioners running. But then food gets too expensive or runs out. Or you can't get insurance after yet another flood, storm or fire. With no money to rebuild, It's time. It's time to move the family somewhere cooler, with regular rain. It's time to move to New Zealand, to Scandinanvia, or to Canada, if you can. What if a few million others go the same route? Our next guest Giles Slade thinks it will happen: a massive migration, driven by climate change and a fallen economy. Millions of Americans, and maybe Latin Americans, will move north. Giles Slade is an award winning author with his works about consumption and planned obsolecence. From his home on the West Coast of Canada, he joins us now, to talk about his book "American Exodus: Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival" Giles is pretty well known for two previous books: "The Big Disconnect – How our long affair with ever-new technologies has undermined interpersonal relationships" and "Made to Break, Technology and Obsolescence in America." That last one captured the International Publisher's Gold Medal (IPPY award) for best Environment/Ecology/Nature book of 2007. We talk about previous migrations, starting with the "OKies" who fled Oklahoma and surrounding states during the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. Giles' message: don't expect to be welcomed as a climate refugee. The OKies were treated as second class citizens, harassed by local police, and got the worst jobs, if any. It was a little better for what may be America's first climate refugees, the thousands who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But there was still a tendency to blame the victims. Plus, there was a reasonably functioning society around them. You
