Why the heck do climate-denying Trump lovers move into the path of Hurricanes?

Oh, the irony.

On Monday, The New York Times had a fascinating series of maps showing where Americans have moved over the past couple of decades as well as depictions of where hurricanes, wildfires, floods and extreme heat have hit particularly hard.

MORE ON HURRICANE HELENE

And guess what? Except for a mass of moves to liberal Southern bastions in such places as Austin, Atlanta and Charlotte, people have tended to transfer to politically conservative areas where the effects of climate change are most fierce.

In other words, to Republican redoubts that back climate change-denying presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose “Drill, baby, drill” quip and other comments, such as that global warming is “one of the greatest scams of all time,” which was issued in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s late-September march across the nation’s Southeast.

For instance, there’s Texas, the largest state in the Lower 48, which has been hit hard by hurricanes such as Beryl earlier in the same month and combined with severe heat to knock out power in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, as it sweltered in 100 degree-plus temperatures. And Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi and the Carolinas, as well as Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, all with Republican senators and records of voting for The Donald. And you can add West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri to that miserable mix.

Meanwhile, more liberal states – such as Illinois, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Michigan – have largely avoided climate-caused catastrophes. Of course, that’s in large part due to the fact that they generally are not in the path of hurricanes or suffer from severe heat, but their residents – as evidenced by their Houses of Congress representatives for President Biden’s climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act – appear to better realize the dangers of global warming and the industrial world’s contributions to it.

So, what impels Americans to move to such areas as Tampa, Fla., which took a big hit from Hurricane Helene as well as other storms before it? In part it’s because of air conditioning, which buffers against the periods of extreme heat. It’s also because they want to escape the cold and snow of the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Then there’s the lower taxes levied in many of these states. And it’s also because real estate prices are often lower in these build, baby, build bastions of conservative capitalism.

That’s until weather events such as Hurricane Helene move in, causing increasing numbers of insurers to abandon such areas or raise premiums to prices that homeowners can’t afford.

And yet they’re still stumping for Trump and his climate change-dismissing deputies.

As they say in New York, oy vey.

(A native of England, veteran journalist Matthew Diebel has worked at Callaway Climate Insights, NBC News, Time, USA Today and News Corp., among other organizations. Having spent much of his childhood next to one of the world’s fastest bodies of water, he is particularly interested in tidal energy.)