RSS
In a previous posting, I pondered some of the reasons the term “climate adaptation” has become anathema in some climate circles. During one of the seminar discussions at the recent NCSE New Green Economy conference entitled “Climate Security in an Age of Uncertainty” I ran into further evidence of the anti-adaptation attitude.
The seminar panel included Joseph Romm, Editor of the Climate Progress blog, Rob Young from Western Carolina University and c0-author of a new book on sea level rise entitled “The Rising Sea,” and Leo Wiegman, who is co-author of “The Climate Solutions Consensus,” and Mayor of Croton-on-Hudson, New York (which like other towns along the Hudson Valley is essentially at sea level.)
Romm, asked to provide the “gloom and doom,” helped set the stage, focusing on the “dust-bowl-ization” of large regions of the world and how sea level will likely rise of 4-6 feet in much of the world by 2100, with a worst case scenario (that he didn’t cite the source of) being 12 feet by 2060. While the dynamics of melting ice sheets are unknown and were left out of IPCC calculations of sea level rise, Romm said that recent research points to sea levels rising an inch a year for decades to come.
Even more chilling, he suggested that the fate of humanity was in the hands of a few US senators who need to vote to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Gloom and doom, indeed.
Rob Young and Leo Wiegman were less negative, focusing more on practical challenges and realities: even half a meter sea level rise will have an enormous impact on property values and basic infrastructure. The train line along the Hudson, for example, barely above sea level as it is, will be inundated by sea level rise and storm surges in the not distant future.
During the Q&A, I had an opportunity to ask Romm about the taboo on the term “adaptation” that he and others have been enforcing, and he acknowledged he didn’t like the term, saying that he agreed with US Science Advisor John Holdren that adaptation equals misery. Rob Young agreed that the term “adaptation” isn’t one he likes, but he didn’t comment on whether he thinks Romm’s alternative term, “triage,” is any better. (It’s not clear that Holdren is as dismissive of the term “adaptation” as Romm claims. In a Climate Progress posting from 2008 Romm cites Holdren as saying many times we have a choice between massive mitigation or massive misery, but the quote he links to from Holdren is more specifically about his doubts about geo-engineering. But does adaptation equal geo-engineering?)
The Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon has a more nuanced and sophisticated analysis of why adaptation is not an ideal term, and they present an alternative that is far and away superior to “triage”: preparedness.
Although the term adaptation is often used to describe the process of coping with the unpreventable consequences of global climate change, we believe the termpreparedness is more appropriate and accurate.
Preparedness means taking proactive steps to anticipate and consciously build resistance and resiliency for the range of climate change-induced stresses that can be reasonably expected to occur during this century.
Adaptation, on the other hand, describes how organisms change over time. In ecological systems, organisms alter their diet, range, and behaviors in response to changing environmental conditions. Species with sufficient genetic or behavioral variation have a higher capacity to adjust successfully to a changing environment. They consequently survive. Those without sufficient variability, or resiliency, perish. Organisms, however, do not anticipate change – they adapt to change as it happens.
Adaptation isn’t going to disappear as a concept, but clearly “preparedness,” and/or “readiness,” are more proactive and positive in tone and focus than adaptation or triage. Whether or not massive mitigation happens, there is already more than enough misery in the world. Climate literacy, integrating science with solutions, is imperative as an individual, national and global priority.
Logo courtesy of Ready.gov
