Can Heatwaves Provide Places With Low Temperatures a New Economic Lifeline?

It is a bit surreal to watch the news about record-breaking temperatures in Europe from a hotel room in eastern Hokkaido. While parts of the UK and France are suffering their first-ever 40C weather in history, the northern island of Japan is still in the cool mid-20s, made chillier with frequent rains and winds, and untempered by the high humidity of the country's more southerly regions that draw up the wet-bulb temperature to uncomfortable levels. There is much to complain about the inconvenience of a rural backwater like eastern Hokkaido, but the summer temperature surely is not one of them.

People often discuss how changing political and climate fortunes can change where humans are populated and major economic activities that place. The likes of Brexit and the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong have prompted speculations about changes in where global financial centers are located and highly qualified white-collar professionals will reside. But rarely do people talk about how the climate may be just as much of a factor in human and economic migration. If London becomes too hot for the average human to survive, for instance, it does not matter how favorable the local laws and regulations for international business are.

Indeed, as average global temperatures continue to rise as a result of climate change, cooler locales like eastern Hokkaido have a brand-new benefit that attracts newcomers. Just as COVID-19 created the conditions for remote workers to seek cheaper rents and fresher air away from urban centers where company offices are located, global warming should make more northerly regions like Hokkaido much more suitable as areas of inhabitation and economic activities. The mere fact that living there does not need to be accompanied by fatalities from hot weather should encourage many to move north.

Of course, the shift to the north will not happen overnight. International borders, especially during COVID, prevent people from easily upping their stakes and moving north. Their jobs, families, and entire communities keep them in place even if the weather no longer suits them. Few companies are yet willing to bet on a significant number of people deserting a major metropolitan area just because of fatal heatwaves. Push and pull factors bigger than sweltering temperatures need to be in place for companies to shift their priorities, triggering their employees and business partners to do the same.

And rural areas with cooler temperatures themselves need to upgrade their living and business environment to attract climate refugees fleeing areas that are too hot to reside. Eastern Hokkaido is home to multiple regional cities that are all seeing economic fortunes decline as what used to be core industries, from mining to fishing, shutting down operations. As unemployed workers leave town to make ends meet, they leave behind empty homes and shops as well as dilapidated infrastructure, triggering even more people to leave in a vicious cycle.

To reverse the downturn requires sustainable investments that the private sector would often be unwilling and unable to deliver. Roads, railways, and flight routes that were shut down because of population and economic decline need to be restored with government incentives and policy support, and any newcomer that considers moving needs to be convinced that public services, from hospitals to electricity, will continue to stay on and be able to accommodate resource-hungry business and population influx characteristic of dynamic and growing urban centers. 

Thankfully, at least in eastern Hokkaido, population decline and urban decay have not become so thorough that they can no longer be reversed. While city centers feature entire buildings that have emptied out as residents and shopkeepers departed, lower population density has instead led to a more car-centric, suburb-focused urban design, with multiple strip malls anchoring local communities. As long as the population does not fall before some dangerous threshold, the malls can be expected to stay and the community thriving around them.

Those existing communities, however devoid of character and distant from one another geographically, provide hope of a declining urban center revitalizing through accepting new residents. As more people come for the cooler weather, there will be demand for more products and services, which in turn would encourage many to stay and work, even if that was not the original intention. And because there remain so many northerly locales that are capable of taking in newcomers, existing local authorities and businesses would be best to encourage such organic community growth to outcompete other places endowed with good weather.