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Has the Corporate Climate Migration Begun? (axios.com) 92

Posted by EditorDavid from the relocation-relocation-relocation dept.
"Companies large and small, some with longtime roots in their neighborhoods, are on the hunt for new real estate that is less prone to weather and climate extremes," writes Axios: The corporate migration underway indicates vulnerable communities may see an exodus of large employers in the coming decades as oceans encroach. Inland areas prone to flooding or wildfires mare see similar challenges. Within the past three years, tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a major hospital in South Carolina, and the nation's eighth-largest airline by passengers carried have all decided to move their infrastructure to higher ground...

According to the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper, the hospital has been located downtown for 165 years....

Meanwhile, in Houston, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is working to complete its new global headquarters in Spring, Texas, after experiencing extensive flooding at its former Houston-area campus in 2016 and then in 2017 during Hurricane Harvey.... Separately, in Florida, the discount airline Spirit is making an extreme weather resilience move of its own. Earlier this year, it announced that it would add a second operations center in Orlando to supplement its current headquarters in Miramar, Florida, just southwest of the airline's largest hub of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport... The hurricane susceptibility of southeastern Florida helped motivate the decision, according to news reports....

Many more businesses are no doubt contemplating similar protective actions, including at the international level where this would manifest itself in a shift of corporate capital and jobs from less climate secure nations to ones with fewer extreme weather risks.
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Has the Corporate Climate Migration Begun? More

Has the Corporate Climate Migration Begun?

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  • Republican Climate Change Award (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    1. Spend decades lying about science and denying climate change.
    2. Claim it's too late to solve climate change.
    3. Condemn the entire planet to 50 feet of rapid sea rise because gullible selfish dumbfucks outnumber decent human beings in America... er at least in the shitty empty states which control American government policies.

    • Real... but slow [Re:Republican Climate Change...] (Score:5, Informative)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @07:58PM (#62073683) Homepage

      3. Condemn the entire planet to 50 feet of rapid sea rise because gullible selfish dumbfucks outnumber decent human beings in America... er at least in the shitty empty states which control American government policies.

      Sea level rise is real and inevitable (even if we stop the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there will still be ice melting due to what we've already put in the atmosphere.)

      It is not, however, rapid.

      IPCC projections are for sea level rise between 26 cm to 82 centimeters by 2100 (depending on emissions)-- that's about one to three feet, not "50 feet of rapid sea rise".
      Reference: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5... [www.ipcc.ch]
      Summary https://www.ipcc.ch/site/asset... [www.ipcc.ch]

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The IPCC deliberately excludes the possibility of rapid ice-sheet collapse.

        The last time CO2 concentration in the atmosphere exceeded 400 ppm, sea level was 24 meters higher than today. It's far more likely we're already on a trajectory to that number than that sea level rise will stay under 1 meter. It will likely take hundreds of years, though, but nothing is certain.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 )

        Those are super-conservative minimum projections, and don't apply if there is significant permafrost melt. (This is already happening)

      • The actual numbers don't matter anymore.

        "Follow the science" is only applicable as long as it hews closely to acceptable dogma, otherwise it's labeled "fake news".

        Even their inaccuracies have been folded into the batter, so to speak; if you (as here) expose a naked and obvious inaccuracy, you must "just get off on pwning the libs".
        It's actually quite a brilliant approach.

    • 1. Spend decades lying about science and denying climate change. 2. Claim it's too late to solve climate change. 3. Condemn the entire planet to 50 feet of rapid sea rise because gullible selfish dumbfucks outnumber decent human beings in America... er at least in the shitty empty states which control American government policies.

      Yes, we can immediately get off the fossil fuels, ruin the economy which needs cheap energy in large quantities and start singing Kumbaya. BTW, why do all "green energy" proponents scoff at nuclear, which is the only reliable form of carbon free energy technology that humanity has for now? Also, will you be the one to tell humanity that it is illegal to drive a car because we cannot produce sufficient green energy even to power homes, much less to supply all the yuppie Tesla cars. In most likelihood, the p

  • Climate? How about economics over vanity? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12, 2021 @06:26PM (#62073449)

    Try to find a company that wasn't located based on where the developers live.
    As they grew super huge that rarely changed, no matter how many times they were mowed over because they were in a flood or hurricane area.
    I'm looking at you east coast/gulf of mexico.
    Every stupid year insurance or tax money from the entire US is wasted on re-re-re-re-building the same areas in thes known diasater-failure areas.
    Move morons!

    • Re:Climate? How about economics over vanity? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @06:37PM (#62073493) Journal
      Economics will trump vanity once the insurers say "nope, we're leaving the state", or "we can insure your building, but your premium payments before the rainy season hits will equal the entire cost of the structure." Then you'll know things have gotten real.

      • Economics will trump vanity once the insurers say "nope, we're leaving the state", or "we can insure your building, but your premium payments before the rainy season hits will equal the entire cost of the structure." Then you'll know things have gotten real.

        Will probably be happening soon, especially in places like Houston, where sea level rise is coupled with land subsidence, giving them a double whammy https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu... [tamu.edu]

        Republicants need to get together and hold a vote to make AGW and land subsidence not a real thing.

  • Cheap land was cheap for a reason (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @06:27PM (#62073457)

    What this summary omits is the simple fact that quite a few Sun Belt corporate headquarters are new-ish buildings built on then-cheap land within the last few decades.

    Heck, when General Electric moved to Boston a few years back, they bought some prime coastal real estate for their new HQ. In an area that's not quite flood prone but is mere blocks away from properties that flood almost every king tide.

    This is less a case of global warming causing hallowed grounds that have been dry for all of history to start flooding all the sudden, as the framing would imply, but more a case of a land rush beginning to bite people in the ass.

    The El Nino cycle is about 11 years. If this one is a little worse than the last one is, in a couple of places that looked very attractive 20 or 30 years ago (whether that worse is mostly natural or partly anthropogenic), then you're going to see a lot of big names moving out of flood zones that are actually flooding this year.

    • Re:Cheap land was cheap for a reason (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @06:43PM (#62073505)

      Apparently, everything must be viewed through the lens of climate change these days, whether it makes sense or not. Like recently, the record heat bubble in the PNW was obliquely blamed on climate change in a recent article featured on Slashdot, even though it was, as far as anyone knows, a completely unrelated freak weather event.

      As I see it, either we accept the common view that corporations are typically short-sighted and only care about their next financial quarter, or we somehow believe that they're so far-sighted than they're planning for the next degree or two of warming we expect in the next half-century or so. Which do you think is more likely?

      This whole article's premise seems far-fetched to me. No, not climate change in general, but the notion that companies are already reacting to the somewhat mild changes in climate that we've experienced so far. I mean - look at Intel. They're setting up new water-intensive fab plants in Arizona, one of the most water-scarce states in the US. That's not exactly thinking long-term about potential climate-related issues.

      In the examples I've seen, the companies involved are either just moving to better locations (officially, for reasons other than climate change), or are opening new locations away from areas that have suffered weather-related damage - which just seems like common sense to me, and not really an indication of any sort of general pattern.

      • Re:Cheap land was cheap for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @09:09PM (#62073789)
        If companies move because of climate change, it isn't going to be because some individual at the company smacked their head on their forehead and said, "The climate is changing! We need to get out of the way!"

        It comes down to things like whether their storm damage insurance premiums went up, becoming a significant factor in potential savings by moving elsewhere.

        • Seems like it all an article covering for the regulatory state that California, New York, Massachusetts and Virginia have become.
          Costal cities are liberal and typically higher risk of natural disaster. You can make the correlation or it can be just ignored, but both are facts.

          There are taxes, environmental controls, corporate regulations, HR controls, traffic and taxes that apply to California and Washington State , that are down right anti business. The population density, cost of living, income taxes

      • You must have missed what happened after 9/11. Everybody wanted to be in Santa Fe from 2002-2006, nobody wanted their data centers in Manhattan, etc. This type of cycle is continuous and easily expected. Companies go for image first, cheap second, and robust third. It is amazing to me just how often the pattern repeats.

        • If you're doing something requiring maximally low latency, like program trading, your servers have to be in lower Manhattan.

          If you're doing just about anything else, then they should likely be as far from the city as acceptable latencies and bandwidths allow.

          NYC is prone to more frequent and over time more damaging and deadly problems than terrorist attacks. Regular crime, hurricanes, floods, "Occupy Wall Street"-ers, other forms of civil unrest and lawlessness, and finally, while it's rarely talked about,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Not all corporations are short sighted - insurance companies play the long game. As such, companies that buy insurance (i.e. all of them) are motivated to reduce risk, and thereby the premiums they pay, over the long term.

    • Re:Cheap land was cheap for a reason (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @07:57PM (#62073679)

      Not so much cheap as prestige. In Seattle, numerous software firms have shoved maritime businesses out of waterfront properties because "Muh view from the boardroom." And the CEO who has his yacht tied up in the marina next door. And with the complicity of a crooked port district. Who now cry about all the freight business picking up and moving to Tacoma. Because rich people don't want to look out their office windows at rusty container ships and fishing boats.

      Fuck them. Let them drown.

    • If they bought in an area that's not-quite flood prone, they can probably use some relatively low-cost techniques to mitigate flood risk.

  • Quote from the hospital administrator (Score:4, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday December 12, 2021 @06:27PM (#62073459) Journal

    The hospital system said it needs to relocate Roper “so patients can more easily access care closer to where they live and work,”

    Over the past year, hospital leaders have considered the cost of staying put and upgrading the hospital at its current site versus building a brand-new hospital somewhere else.

    “Either one, you’re talking about half a billion dollars,” he said. The plan they settled on presents the fewest problems for ongoing patient care.

  • Rising sea levels won't affect people overnight, generally. The rich will have plenty of notice to flee to safer areas. These good areas will be priced too high for the poor - their homes will depreciate in value in the at-risk areas and cause negative equity.
    • At least we were warned

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      The extremely poor people of Appalachia will be laughing from there mountaintops and to be frank they deserve to be laughing https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      • Owning land on the high ground will be the equivalent of owning land that contains oil or gold. Why shouldn't another group of people get the chance to become filthy rich for doing nothing, just like some of the other asset-owning families!

    • Rising sea levels won't affect people overnight, generally. The rich will have plenty of notice to flee to safer areas. These good areas will be priced too high for the poor - their homes will depreciate in value in the at-risk areas and cause negative equity.

      Early this year, the California Coastal Commission released a detailed projection and map for my area.

      Over the next 10 years the expected rise in sea level will mean that during extreme (king) tides and storm surges the water level will reach the surface of my back yard -no big deal. During normal times, the water will be a couple feet below the surface. This will cause problems as the sewer, potable water, electric lines, etc were not built to be permanently submerged in salt water -they will likely corr

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > Parts of the road I take from home to work will be underwater.

        You can transition to a tourist based economy with gondola rides and everything.

        How do you look in horizontal stripes? http://www.italiangoodnews.com... [italiangoodnews.com]

      • If the road you take from home to work will be underwater, you need to scream at Caltrans to do its job and rebuild it properly so it WON'T flood.

        Keeping a road dry isn't rocket science. Even MIAMI has a stretch of road that's literally below not only sea level, but the water level of the canal right next to it. It obviously requires pumps to keep it dry, if only for the sake of managing stormwater that would otherwise flow down into it like a log flume every time it rains... but it works, it's dry, and was

        • Florida has a very different problem: The heavy draw on the fresh water reserves in the ground and the rising sea levels has started is contaminating the fresh water reserves so getting fresh drinking water has become more complicated. Not impossible, not an immediate disaster, but it has become an ongoing item of concern and management. And as more freshwater is used and the sea levels continue to rise, the availability of freshwater will become a real issue.

          • You're forgetting we have a rather large body of freshwater in the middle of the state. We prefer to not use it for drinking water because it's heavily polluted with fertilizer runoff and tastes like shit without a lot of expensive (compared to well water) processing... but it's there, ready to use when we finally need it. We even have several convenient century-old canals capable of delivering its water directly to Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and Lee Counties. Tampa just built its first reverse o

      • Rising sea levels won't affect people overnight, generally. The rich will have plenty of notice to flee to safer areas. These good areas will be priced too high for the poor - their homes will depreciate in value in the at-risk areas and cause negative equity.

        Early this year, the California Coastal Commission released a detailed projection and map for my area.

        Over the next 10 years the expected rise in sea level will mean that during extreme (king) tides and storm surges the water level will reach the surface of my back yard -no big deal. During normal times, the water will be a couple feet below the surface. This will cause problems as the sewer, potable water, electric lines, etc were not built to be permanently submerged in salt water -they will likely corrode at an accelerated rate.

        Parts of the road I take from home to work will be underwater. The lowlying area along the coast will be submerged. The park along the road will become a lagoon as the bay expands.

        Wish I could reach the author of said map with a "wanna bet?" proposition.

  • So moving to an area that will be baking people in 20 years or so ? Never mind the increase in severe weather (like tornados)

    They should look for more stable areas, maybe the northeastern portion of the rust belt. That area should be able to avoid many issues with climate change for quite a while.

  • Welcome to the Pacific North West kids. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Not at sea level, no over the top extreme weather, not too hot, not too cold. Rains plenty most of the year. No "only think of your self" republicans running the show.

    But be prepared to pay an arm and a leg for a house here..

    We also have Mt Rainier, North America's most dangerous volcano .. Oh and one in 500 year magnitude 9 earthquakes, aside from that 9 months of overcast puts most people off.. And the "Seattle freeze" in the Seattle area where outsiders feel forever snubbed by locals because of their str

    • [...] no over the top extreme weather

      Flooding [nasa.gov] isn't extreme?

    • I love the climate of the PNW, but, realistically, you're going to be dealing with not only major earthquakes but also tsunamis, "atmospheric rivers," occasional freak incidents like temps going up to 50C, and other weather-related crap quite a bit more often than every 500 years.

      Where I live, northeast Ohio, we don't have a lot of weather that can kill people in quantity. Mostly heat waves, blizzards, and tornadoes, but the last time any of these killed more than a handful of people at a time was longer a

  • FEMA updates its flood maps every 10-20 years. And when the maps where updated about 5 years ago; where I live the flood lines were pushed in land a couple hundred feet in areas that had previously been considered "safe". and with that comes a host of costs anytime you want to build in that area.

    If you want to see what the climate folks are thinking, look at the FEMA flood maps and how they have changed.

    • What FEMA and the insurance companies both know is that when sea level rises x amount, the amount storm surges can travel inland increases by y amount, based on the slope of the shore. The average slope [researchgate.net] varies from location to location but due to the natural angle of repose anywhere it is not a cliff it is less steep than 1:1...

  • And an earthquake could destroy either place any time now

    • Actually, if you're talking about near-complete destruction, the New Madrid fault system could kill many millions of folks along the Mississippi River, especially in the Memphis and St. Louis areas, and so could any quake in close proximity to New York.

      SoCal and most of the rest of the West Coast has building codes designed to withstand all but the very worst earthquakes. Many of the other places in the U.S. that should have such codes don't.

      • Socal does, from what I know in the cascadia region not so much as they have found evidence of 9.0 earthquakes and potential for those quakes in the future. They have also found evidence of 100ft tsunamis on the coast which the region is not prepared for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Who knew? Maybe we should try more of that before restructuring a planetary economy to keep them from having to.

    Unless fighting climate change really ISN'T about fighting climate change...

  • Fuck up the environment and move to higher ground so you can continue to fuck up the environment for fun and profit

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