Southern states are not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science zealots. As climate is changing, so is the south – in this new column, Megan Mayhew Bergman goes back home to find out more

What you know about the American south and climate change is wrong

What you know about the American south and climate change is wrong

There’s a Welsh word – hiraeth – which refers to a “homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, or a home which maybe never was”.

This word evokes the way I feel about the American south. It’s where I grew up, a place I loved as a child and came into conflict with as a teenager. Though I have a little observational distance now, the south still feels like home in a bone-deep way.

Most writers I know wrestle with the idea of home. It’s a place you love, pick fights with, want to protect. I’m often frustrated by the cliched representation of the south in the media. But I’m even more frustrated by the south’s tepid response to climate change, and politicians who continually fail their constituents’ best interests.

I was raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and made it to college not having traveled above the Mason-Dixon Line. I never intended to go “up there”, to cold and buttoned-up New England, but after 30 years in the south, I moved with my husband to his family farm in Vermont.

Nine years later, I observe many people in the two regions still viewing each other with suspicion and anthropological wonder.

My northern friends and family say, “I could never live ‘down there’. Those politics, and the hot summers.”

My southern friends and family say, “I could never live ‘up there’. I don’t know how you survive winters.” (I hardly do.)

But what used to seem like quaint regionalism feels like tribalism in 2018. When I watch news reports about hurricanes and politics, I see an overly simplistic and dismissive portrayal of southerners. I know that portrayal is historically hard-earned, yet unfair to the increasingly purple nature of the urban south, and the hard-working intellectuals, entrepreneurs, conservationists, social-justice workers, bookstore owners and artists that call the south home. Or even moderates alienated by the current state of political discourse, or teenagers approaching voting age who grew up more socially and environmentally progressive than their parents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clockwise: Flood damage to farms in Wallace, North Carolina; Isle De Jean Charles, which is disappearing due to rising water levels; Hector Benthall gets a hug from his neighbor after remnants of Hurricane Michael; a woman carrying water in Immokalee, Florida, after a hurricane. Composite: Jo-Anne Mcarthur, Amir Levy, Spencer Platt, Sean Rayford

I’m no southern apologist, nor do I speak for any southerner other than myself. But I want readers to know that the south is not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science zealots (though they thrive there, and have the habit of being the loudest in the room).

When we plan and talk about the south and climate change, it’s critical to acknowledge that the region is multicultural and multitudinous.

I want to show Guardian readers some of this texture, dig into the complexity and dissonance of the south. In this new column, I’ll introduce you to shrimpers, faith leaders, real estate agents, artists and elders. You will read about conservatives, independents and liberals.

Together, we’ll walk on the frontlines of climate change, visit flood zones, public housing, schools, coastal landmarks and places under pressure.

Something that keeps me awake at night: the south-east is projected to lose the most economic value in climate change scenarios, and may be the least prepared to cope, given the outright climate change denial espoused by many southern politicians.

How can a region that finds talking about climate change uncomfortable build up smart levels of resilience to face an increase in heat-related deaths, energy costs, flooding, and a decrease in agricultural output and outdoor labor productivity?

How can it prepare new power grids and a ready and willing workforce for the green economy?

How can a region so heavily invested in its Christian identity deny, ignore or talk around a problem that’s going to hit its poorest and most vulnerable the hardest?

If the south is to build resilience in the face of climate change, hearts, minds and policy will have to change quickly. Otherwise, the region will face further, and potentially catastrophic, losses to culture, landscape, property and biodiversity. But the extreme politicization of climate change in the south, paired with the often condescending stance of the already converted believers, makes this much-needed cultural shift a hard sell.

I know what it’s like to move out of a classic red state mentality; it’s an awkward leap, like crashing a party you weren’t invited to. It’s a new language, accent, code. Sometimes it feels like trying to sit with a smug group of high schoolers in the cafeteria who profess to have better taste in music. But in 2018, it’s in our shared interest to make conservation conversations easier to join.

I think a lot about conversion moments, what it takes to move from a place of cold denial to complexity or increased understanding. These moments are often experiential. I wish that more people were afforded the opportunity to decamp from regionalist mentalities, political ideology and ivory towers and witness the humanity of the “other side” – or, as those of us who revere the natural world would say, the sheer interconnectedness of all species.

I think of the Federal Writer’s Project, when writers like Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston got out into the field and attempted to capture the south in a time of profound struggle and change. Hurston wrote of Florida in her proposal, “There is still an opportunity to observe the wombs of folk culture still heavy with life.” The American south is again in a poignant moment, culturally heavy with life, with a force stronger than the Great Depression beginning to shape it. I want to bear witness to what’s hanging in the balance, get real about the stakes.

One summer night, while out in the field in such a way, on the roof of a shrimp boat in the middle of the Ogeechee river off the coast of Georgia, I sat with a diverse group of southern artists and conservationists and watched the moon rise over the salt marsh. We found ourselves discussing conservation’s race problem; the continued glorification of plantation culture; the danger of anti-science mentalities in schools; the language southerners use to avoid using the politicized term “climate change”.

That night, we told stories about the changes we’re already seeing, and the financial and spiritual impact on real people we know. We wondered about the future of coastal real estate, the art that will rise from this tense moment, and where the evangelicals are when it comes to protecting Earth, or, as some say, the Creation.

These are conversations I’ve always wanted to have, questions I’ve always wanted to ask. I’ll continue to explore them in a column here, with you.

One of the reasons I will forever be homesick for the landscape of the south, in the vague sense of hiraeth, is that none of us can truly return to the landscapes of our youth. We are no longer waiting for climate change; it is well upon us. We are already in the process of being shaped and displaced. We are bearing witness to a climate already changed.