Climate Adaptation vs. Mitigation Fail

“I still don’t love talking about climate adaptation. I wish we didn’t have to…. I’m not admitting defeat. But I am realistic that we need to adapt too.” ( – Tim McPhie, below)

In the post-Net Zero CO2 world (yes, here we are), the new argument is every-little-bit counts “to avoid the worst effects of climate change.” Forget precision or cost/benefit analysis; it is a qualitative ‘deep ecology‘ argument. They know that the real math is daunting with negative CO2 emissions being required starting decades ago.

Brave talk about energy transformation will continue, but reality is creeping in. Consider this from Tim McPhie, a five-year climate communication expert at the European Commission. “I’ll admit it,”, he posted on social media, “I was never really comfortable talking about climate adaptation.”

I guess it always felt like accepting defeat. I used to think that talking about adapting meant accepting that we wouldn’t be able to stop or limit climate change. And it felt like giving a free pass to those who didn’t even want to try.

It was always easier to talk about climate mitigation. Governments and institutions setting new targets is easy to explain. Encouraging people to install solar panels, build wind turbines, use less energy, drive electric cars, make energy efficient products… There was always a story.

But change is change.

I don’t regret for a second communicating the urgency of reducing emissions. And I think that we made major progress. But we have already seen climate change hitting hard in the past few years.

The EU clearly needs to become more resilient to temperature changes, shifting precipitation patterns, changing seasons and more extreme weather events. This is essential for our health and wellbeing, for our security and for our prosperity….

It is a bummer argument, he acknowledges.

[Adaptation and resilience] … feels so defensive, focused on avoiding damage, preventing the worst kind of harms, minimising or avoiding losses. I think most people want to reach for something good in their lives, not hide from something bad. They want to seek out opportunities, not avoid risks.

Luckily there is a different story starting to emerge about climate adaptation. William Samoei Ruto PHD and Patrick Verkooijen tell it well:

Adaptation is not simply a means of minimising the damage inflicted by extreme weather, although that alone would justify the investment. Done properly, it can transform economies, as well as strengthen them against natural disasters … Companies that develop cutting-edge solutions for climate adaptation…will gain a competitive advantage in a world where demand for these products and services is only likely to grow.

McPhie ends:

I still don’t love talking about climate adaptation. I wish we didn’t have to. But we do. And at least there are some some more positive stories being told. We must still keep fighting to reduce emissions, and I’m not admitting defeat. But I am realistic that we need to adapt too.

Conclusion

The inconvenient truth is that the whole climate issue is self-defeating. Warmer increases the demand for air conditioning and mist machines during the hot months, increasing energy demand. Wind, solar, and battery industrialization come with their own environmental drawbacks, not to mention economic burden.

Adaptation itself requires a whole lot of cement and steel, which requires a lot of affordable, reliable energy, not wind and solar. And that means higher, incremental CO2 emissions.

It is hard being “green”.

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