Water Refugees in Montana?

drought in the WestIt's one of the building blocks of life. A resource that's bountiful in western Montana -- in our lakes and waterways, and underground. Our water, according to Professor Steven Running, is what could become the state's biggest draw.

"We could end up, I suppose, with a dramatic acceleration of population here," Running said. "Like we've never seen before."

Running has studied climate change for much of his career. He even won a Nobel Prize for his work in 2007.

"In the last 50 years, the winters have grown shorter and the summers, two weeks longer," Running explained. "In the next 50 years, we expect two more weeks of shorter winter, which is when we store up the water, and two weeks of longer summer, where we use it."

When you add a historic drought into the mix, you get what's happening now in California, and much of the southwest -- a severe water shortage.

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"You can start to imagine that, through time, there will start to be people that just bail out of those states."

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