As climate change generates more extreme weather events, more places will incur damage from them. This will lead to an increase in insurance claims, and insurance premiums will increase in response to the increase risk. It may well get to the point where some areas can no longer be insured realistically.
By this point, people who can afford to are likely to have left, taking their assets with them. Those who can’t, will be left to their own meagre devices.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton have just helped set the scene for “The Light Pirate” by Lily Brooks-Dalton, which tells the tale of a young girl, Wanda (named for the hurricane that raged as she was born), and her experience of growing up in a Florida that is rapidly vanishing, both physically, and socially.
The other side of course is Climate Adoption. Canada is one such land. The Great White North is quickly becoming a vast temperate zone. We are having to deal with everything from rapid agricultural change to large forest fires to the opening of the Northwest Passage.
There are many stories about this, I haven’t listed any here because they’re fairly low on my (glacial) reading list. Google ‘Canadian Cli-Fi’ to delve into this genre.
Brenda Cooper’s Out of Ash discusses the option of moving a city wholesale to a new location
William Gibson frequently looks at what happens in abandoned liminal spaces which become environments of last resort for people who have no alternatives - like the Golden Gate Bridge people in Virtual Light
From Earth to Waterworld, I’ve seen a number of depictions of apocalyptic flooding caused by climate change, but I’m not familiar with any stories that tackle the multi-pronged assault we now see coming.
The financial migration is reality. From Columbia Magazine: America’s Great Climate Migration Has Begun.
…insurance companies are now routinely losing money on homeowners’ policies in at least eighteen states — primarily because of wildfires, floods, and intensifying windstorms …in response many companies are refusing to sell or renew policies in certain at-risk areas, leaving homeowners scrambling to find coverage.