The Weight of Our Stuff: How Moving Made Me Reflect on Climate Displacement

Dr. Jennifer Cartier
Executive Vice President of Educational Solutions and Professor of Education

Last spring, I stood among a sea of half-packed boxes and felt the weight of all the stuff my husband and I had accumulated over decades. I felt so overwhelmed I wanted to cry. Now, months later, and on the eve of Climate Week, I am struck by the realization that the weight of our possessions isn’t just physical or psychological; it’s planetary.

Over the last six months, my family has experienced what my sister calls “the year of our great migration.” Everyone—aside from my sister, ironically—moved into a new home. My father left the house he shared with my mom for 50 years and downsized into a small apartment. My daughter and her husband bought their first house. My son and his partner moved not once, but three times! And after 30 years of marriage, my husband and I decided it was time for us to downsize too, a decision that wasn’t easy, but felt necessary. After moving my father earlier in the year, we saw the writing on the wall: we didn’t want our kids to deal with the burden of sorting through our belongings one day. Moving forced us to confront the reality of our overconsumption.

We moved from a three-bedroom house into a one-bedroom apartment in a farmhouse I inherited from my grandmother. Sorting through our things was challenging enough, but the farmhouse itself contained nearly 80 years’ worth of family possessions. It turns out my ancestors, though they had little, kept everything—and those things piled up across generations. Our summer was spent holding yard sales (where we cajoled innocent strangers into taking home things they probably didn’t need) and making endless trips to Goodwill, the town Transfer Station, and a storage unit.

Even now, a month after moving in, we are not finished dealing with our stuff. Aside from this being exhausting, I am beginning to worry that it is having a negative impact on our personal relationships; I suspect my son-in-law is wary of visiting, suspecting that we’ll try to offload more “gifts” from our downsizing efforts. So far, we’ve handed over a dining room set, bookshelves, a dresser, a couch, a queen-sized bed, boxes of books, kitchenware—and even a treadmill. Yes, a treadmill. We thought we needed all this stuff at one point. Turns out, we don’t.

As I reflect on all this, it takes little mental effort to connect our culture of consumption—and accumulation of things—with climate change. Our overconsumption is not just a personal burden; it’s a planetary one. Household consumption accounts for as much as 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The things we buy, store, and eventually discard all leave an impact (if you haven’t seen it already, watch The Story of Stuff). And here’s the cruel irony: climate change, fueled by our consumption, is driving people out of their homes. While it is too simple to say that climate change is the only (or even the main) driver of displacement, it is unquestionably a compounding factor in the forced movement of people. (Note here that the use of the term “displacement” rather than “migration” is intentional and reflects the fact that the vast majority of climate and disaster-related human movement occurs within national boundaries rather than across borders.)

In 2023, nearly 47 million people were displaced within their own countries, with 56% of these displacements caused by disasters—77% of which were weather-related. These aren’t just abstract numbers; they represent millions of people forced to move, often suddenly, because they no longer had a choice. They had to leave their homes, their things, their lives behind. It’s a sobering thought: the things we accumulate, the choices we make, contribute to the climate disasters displacing millions of people. As the frequency and intensity of climate-driven disasters increase, more people will be forced to leave their homes. According to the Groundswell Report, climate change could displace up to 216 million people by 2050. Much of this displacement will affect people already vulnerable due to poverty, political unrest, or natural resource depletion.

Image from Zandt, F., & Richter, F. (2021, November 4). Infographic: Climate change, the Great Displacer. Statista Daily Data. 
https://www.statista.com/chart/26117/average-number-of-internal-climate-migrants-by-2050-per-region

These displacements won’t happen in far-off places alone; in 2022, 3.2 million people in the United States were displaced by climate-related disasters, with over half a million still displaced at the start of 2023.

When I think about my family’s recent moves, I realize we were fortunate. We had the luxury of choosing when to move, where to go, and what to take. For millions of people, there is no choice. The stress of moving is hard enough when it’s self-imposed, but when displacement happens because of fires, floods, hurricanes, or droughts, it becomes a matter of survival. Many displaced people try to return to what remains of their homes or settle nearby because moving further is too costly or too difficult.

So as Climate Week approaches, I’m asking myself—and I hope others will too—how can we reduce our consumption and lessen our impact on the planet? How do we change the way we live, so that fewer people are forced to leave everything behind? Moving has taught me that we need so much less than we think, and that our culture of overconsumption contributes directly to the crises we see unfolding around us.

It’s time we start thinking more intentionally about what we keep, what we discard, and how we live. The choices we make today will shape the future—for ourselves and for generations to come.

Sources

Cho, R. (2020, December 16). How buying stuff drives climate change. State of the Planet. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/
Free Range Studios. (2009). The Story of Stuff. YouTube. Retrieved September 20, 2024, from https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM?feature=shared.
Huang, L. (2023, November 16). Climate migration 101: An Explainer. Migration Information Source. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/climate-migration-101-explainer
Siegfried, K. (2023, November 15). Climate change and displacement: The myths and the facts. UNHCR US. https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/stories/climate-change-and-displacement-myths-and-facts
Stadler, K., Steen-Olsen, K., Wood, R., Vita, G., Tukker, A., & Hertwich, E. G. (2015). Environmental Impact Assessment of Household Consumption. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 20(3). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12371
Zandt, F., & Richter, F. (2021, November 4). Infographic: Climate change, the Great Displacer. Statista Daily Data. https://www.statista.com/chart/26117/average-number-of-internal-climate-migrants-by-2050-per-region/