Media Claim Climate Migrants Overrunning New Hampshire – As Population Dwindles

New Hampshire Public Radio published an article yesterday claiming migrants have begun flocking to New Hampshire to escape climate change crises, with the growing population allegedly creating new tensions in the Granite State. However, a look at New Hampshire demographics shows New Hampshire’s population is growing at a mere 0.4 percent per year, which is well below the national average. To the extent climate plays any role in population patterns, people continue to seek warmer climates in the Sun Belt rather than the colder climates of northern states like New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) article, titled “As Climate Change Drives Migration to N.H., Towns Face Tension and Opportunity,” claims climate change will force – and is already beginning to force – “millions of Americans to relocate” to northern states. According to the article, “preparing for those potential waves of climate migrants will be no easy task – and some are already arriving.”

The article emphasizes negative impacts of a growing population. Quoting a climate activist representing the left-leaning National League of Cities, the NHPR states, “An increase in traffic, people getting evicted, a lack of hospital beds because there’s more people – these are the kinds of things that create tension,” Marandi said. “It’s not that people don’t want new people to come in. It’s that when the systems aren’t set up properly in advance to hold more people, then the existing population can get resentful.”

The NHPR article, however, presents no factual data to support its assertion that climate-change disasters are driving people to New Hampshire – let alone in such large numbers that tensions are brewing and New Hampshire communities can’t keep up with the population influx. That seems odd, considering state and federal authorities keep highly detailed data on population trends in New Hampshire and for the nation as a whole.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the U.S. population has grown by 0.6 percent or more every year since at least the end of World War II. By comparison, New Hampshire’s population grew just 0.4 percent last year, and has not grown by 0.6 percent or more in any of the past 15 years. In short, New Hampshire’s population is growing much slower than the national average, and New Hampshire’s rate of population growth is especially sluggish during the asserted “climate emergency.”

Like so many other so-called climate crises, the notion that climate change is fueling a mass influx of climate migrants to New Hampshire and disrupting New Hampshire’s small-town culture is simply and provably false. New Hampshire Public Radio and the mainstream media continue to spread such climate lies, but Climate Realism will continue to provide the factual truth.