Print Friendly and PDF
Nowhere to go in New Bern: Climate catastrophe spurs migrants in US South

Nowhere to go in New Bern: Climate catastrophe spurs migrants in US South

8 min read

Hurricane Florence ravaged North Carolina last fall. While cleanup continues and residents pick up the pieces of their life, many people in New Bern, a small community along the Neuse River in the eastern part of the state, have nothing to pick up. Homes have been destroyed and won't be rebuilt. Lives have been upended.


We visited New Bern to document the challenges of the community's most disenfranchised as public housing residents, along with other poor, disabled, elderly, and vulnerable people, are becoming a first wave of climate migrants in the U.S.—people selectively displaced by increasingly frequent storms and floods, moved because they can't afford to stay.

Their forced removal marks the sputtering end of a long effort to close down the project of government-subsidized housing in this country, leaving affordable housing to the so-called free market. And those that do stay face both psychological tolls and environmental toxins left in the storm's wake.

This is what a climate change catastrophe looks like.

Stay informed: sign up for The Daily Climate newsletter
Top news on climate impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered to your inbox week days.

Poor southerners are joining the globe's climate migrants

They put us in this "weird palliative care kind of situation, just waiting for it to die. And they're not providing any support for it while it's dying."


Lingering long after a storm, mold and mental health issues

North Carolinians are organizing against "toxic resiliency," focused on healing from trauma.


LISTEN: Visiting climate migrants in New Bern, North Carolina

"This is the worst storm I've ever endured."


Editor's note: This series is the result of a collaboration between EHN and Scalawag Magazine, an independent nonprofit magazine that covers the American South.

About the author(s):

Lewis Raven Wallace

Lewis Raven Wallace is a journalist and editor based in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on people who are economically, geographically, and politically marginalized, and he's a regular contributor to Scalawag Magazine. His forthcoming book from University of Chicago Press is about the history of "objectivity" in journalism.

Become a donor
Today's top news
From our newsroom

Op-ed: Reducing soil toxics in community gardens

How different groups engaged in community gardens can cultivate partnerships and practices to reduce harmful chemical exposures.

Opinión: Reducir los tóxicos en los suelos de las huertas comunitarias

De como los diferentes grupos involucrados en las huertas comunitarias pueden cultivar alianzas y prácticas que reduzcan la exposición a químicos dañinos.

Visiting health care professionals take “environmental justice tour” of Pittsburgh

Doctors, nurses and hospital staff from across the country learned about the city’s ongoing problems with pollution.

Stay safe this summer: Ditch sunscreens with “troublesome” oxybenzone, experts say

Fewer US sunscreens contain oxybenzone, an ingredient with health and safety concerns

LISTEN: Kristina Marusic joins the Out d'Coup podcast to discuss "A New War on Cancer"

"These are not just abstract policy questions or technical data. These are people's lives we're talking about here."