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Will climate change force you to leave your home? Columbia Law professor Michael Gerrard explains the five futures facing American cities as extreme heat, flooding, wildfires and soaring insurance costs reshape where we can live.

Your house might be worth less than you think, and harder to insure than you’d like. So do you fight to stay, or do you go? And who gets to decide?

Michael has spent decades at the intersection of climate and the law. In his new law review article, Five Urban Futures for a Hot Planet, he lays out the options every American city now faces: sprout new cities, grow existing ones, stay and adapt, shrink, or leave. None of them are easy, and every one of them hits your savings, your neighborhood and your community.

When Gregg asks whether America is ready for climate change to reshape the places we call home, Michael doesn’t hesitate: “The short answer is hell no.” Estimates of how many Americans will need to relocate by the end of the century range from 4 million to 100 million. At the low end, existing cities can absorb them. At the high end, we may need to build entirely new ones.

They dig into why extreme heat is the deadliest climate threat, why storm sewers built “for your grandfather’s storms” can’t keep up, what Hoboken got right after Hurricane Sandy, and why New Orleans rebuilt in the same flood zones after Katrina. Michael also explains the trap many homeowners are already in: if your house is at risk, you can’t sell it for enough to buy somewhere safer. As he puts it: “A lot of people are just stuck.”

If you own a home, live near the coast or a forest, or have ever heard someone say “the climate has always been changing,” this is the episode to watch.

 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

  • The five urban futures (sprout, grow, stay, shrink and leave) and the trade-offs of each

  • How many Americans could be displaced by climate change, and why the estimates vary so widely

  • Why “the climate has always been changing” misses the point about the pace of change

  • Why extreme heat is the most lethal impact of climate change, and how trees help cool cities

  • What homeowners can do now: air conditioning, smoke filters, fire-resistant roofs and flood protection

  • The flood insurance gap most homeowners don’t know about until it’s too late

  • Why the experts’ plan to stop rebuilding parts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was rejected

  • Seawalls, beach renourishment and tidal gates: what they solve and what they don’t

  • How Hoboken became a model for climate resilience after Hurricane Sandy

  • Why stronger building codes work, and who fights hardest against them

  • Why Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo and other Rust Belt cities could become climate havens

  • Why building brand-new cities in the U.S. is so hard, and where they could go

 

Michael B. Gerrard is the Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School and the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He practiced environmental law at Arnold & Porter for many years, has written 14 books, and received the American Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Environment, Energy, and Resources Law and Policy in 2024. His upcoming book is Law for a Hot Planet: Legal Tools to Cope With a Dangerously Changing Climate.

 

Contact / Follow Michael Gerrard:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gerrard-534262131/ Columbia Law School: https://law.columbia.edu/faculty/michael-gerrard Sabin Center for Climate Change Law: https://climate.law.columbia.edu/

 

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