By historical and climatological accounts, human-caused climate change began about 250 years ago.

The dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-to-late 1700s meant new and better goods could be produced on a massive scale. In New England and in central Maine, industry first relied on water power. But eventually, the steam engine-powered factories and ships required energy. Enter: coal — the cheapest, most abundant and hottest-burning fuel.

Greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide, from coal — and, later, other fossil fuels — began heating the atmosphere around the same time as the founding of the United States. Since then, global temperatures have risen quickly: about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.

Maine has already felt the heat, with record-breaking years and stronger storms. By 2085, the Maine Climate Council has said, “central Maine’s climate could resemble current conditions in New Jersey.”

Colby College associate professor of environmental studies Gail Carlson, who is also a contributing scientist to the work of the Maine Climate Council, recently talked about what Maine can expect over the next 250 years.

Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

We’re having this conversation amid Maine’s hottest week so far this year. What can we expect from extreme heat over the next century or so?

Well, I just returned from Germany, where it was 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Farhenheit) in Leipzig. The asphalt on the streets melted over the tram tracks, and no one has air conditioning there. I was there, thinking: We are sleepwalking into a disaster here. It’s only going to get worse, unfortunately.

There is a ton of uncertainty in predicting exactly how hot it’s going to be in the world, in the U.S., and in Maine. We have made progress in terms of climate action at the policy level and investments in renewable energy, such that the worst-case scenarios for warming are probably off the table now. So that’s a good thing. But Maine has already warmed around 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years or so, so it’s not like, “Oh, we’re good now.”

I think it’s reasonable that we can expect warming to continue. Exactly how much in Maine is hard to say.

What about extreme weather? How can Maine prepare for more extreme storms?

All of the above.

You have to talk about extreme weather differently in Maine than you would in, say, Florida, which is a place that’s losing so much of its coastal land to sea-level rise, to extreme storms, severe flooding, things like that. In Maine, over time, we are experiencing more average precipitation than we did 100 years ago, and more days where there’s a storm with more than an inch of rain.

Having this conversation in Maine is much more hopeful than it is in a lot of other places because Maine has done a ton to try to prepare. The legislature in 2025 passed a law to increase storm preparedness. Focusing on community resilience, infrastructure resilience, building back natural areas that can absorb some of these things, having less pavement — all of these things that we can do, which are super important, are in Maine’s climate plan.

Is Maine prepared, or preparing, for climate refugees? Is that a thing the climate council is thinking about?

The state is thinking about it. I think about it in the context of the human impacts of climate change — human migration.

The U.S. government in its Fifth National Climate Assessment highlighted migration as one of the key issues. New Orleans was basically just told, “Look, you need to abandon ship in the next couple decades.” I increasingly hear my friends saying. “Oh, we’re making a decision to move somewhere because of climate change,” and Maine does come out pretty well.

A lot of people don’t like winter, so they’re not going to come here, but we have a lot of water here. We don’t have the extreme temperatures that Phoenix has, for example. Our forests are actually not at high risk of wildfires. I don’t think Maine is a panacea, but I think the state is thinking about that now.

About 40% of the U.S. population lives near the coast. Many of them are going to have to move. Where are they going to go? Are they just going to go a few miles inland? Or are they going to say, “All right, Louisiana is not looking good, I’m moving to Maine.”

What are you hopeful about over the next 250 years? From where can we draw some inspiration?

There’s a lot of inspiration that can be drawn from the way that Maine has responded. We are aggressively working on climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. We have pretty aggressive climate targets.

I do a lot of advocacy work. There’s an amazing recognition in Maine that we have to take care of each other. I think we are. The doom-and-gloom narratives, they don’t necessarily work when it’s not related to something that’s affecting you. It’s easy to tune it out, but the reality is we can’t just ignore these looming threats, and maybe we can talk about it a little bit differently. I use a public health lens on climate change because when it’s your family who’s sweating and getting heat stress, or if someone in your family is a fisherman or lobsterman — when you are directly affected by these things, you’re more likely to understand what’s at stake.

We need to still have conversations about how people are affected, but in ways that are directly related to people’s experiences, and that identify solutions.