“Each time there was very little advance warning,” the county sheriff said in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report. “People woke up at night with three to four inches of water already in their homes.”

Soldier’s Grove is a small town of fewer than 600 people located near the Kickapoo River in Wisconsin. The Kickapoo is not a genial body of water. In 1907, the river flooded , dumping record amounts of water into downtown Soldier's Grove. Then it did so again in 1912, 1917, 1935, 1951, and 1978. The town saw 25 nationally declared flood disasters in a 38-year period.

In 1937, the residents of Soldier’s Grove decided they'd had enough and petitioned Congress to help them fund a solution. It took 32 years, but in 1975, the town got a proposal for a $3.5 million levee to protect their $1 million worth of property. After considering the math, the citizens of Soldier’s Grove came up with a different plan for the money: They would move the town to higher land.

By 1983, the relocation was complete. And Soldier’s Grove hadn’t just rebuilt, it had made improvements. The business district became the country’s first "solar village," in which all commercial buildings had to get at least half of their energy from the sun, a radical gesture for 1983. The medical center, the pharmacy, the library, the fire station, the post office, and more, all ran on solar—and still do.

Soldier’s Grove is an early example of managed retreat: a proactive, intentional shift of civilization away from an environmental threat. Today, managed retreat is a potential strategy for survival in the face of rising sea levels from our rapidly changing climate. While most major cities talk only about walls and infrastructure to protect against the encroaching sea, Soldiers Grove is a model of how retreat can be a cost-effective option, and a chance to do something more than just run away.

The question isn't whether we will retreat, it's how we will retreat.

In the past 30 years, 1.3 million people have vacated their homes through managed retreat. Most of the time, individual houses are bought out by government agencies, like FEMA, in areas hit by repeated climate disasters. But sea levels are continuing to rise, and could even be accelerating, according to a recent NASA study. By 2100, 72 to 187 million more people could be displaced, forcing us to rethink our piecemeal strategies.

Those working in climate science, sociology, urban planning, and law are grappling with how managed retreat can be more than an option of last resort. Scientists and policy makers envision that if carefully planned, retreat could be a tool to reckon with social and racial inequalities, and the reality that global warming will exacerbate these injustices.