A politically incorrect solution to climate change

Global warming seems inevitable. So maybe we should stop trying to prevent it and start finding ways to live with it—through adaptation.

Marco Visscher | June 2011 issue

It probably won’t make you any friends if you say it out loud, but preventing further global warming is going to be a pain in the neck.

To combat climate change, we have to emit fewer greenhouse gases. The way we consume and produce energy will have to change radically. Our lifestyles will have to be revised so drastically that even diehard anti-materialists will protest. The solution requires the adoption of a massive CO2 tax, which will substantially affect the world economy, with unknown consequences. It requires every country—rich and poor—to cooperate on political protocols.

No wonder the process has been such an uphill battle.

But a different perspective is emerging, an approach that seems far more affordable, practical and effective—adaptation. Adaptation refers to the ability to develop creative strategies that reduce our vulnerability to the effects of climate change, such as building better flood defenses, constructing irrigation systems and installing hurricane strapping to prevent roofs from blowing away during hurricanes and heavy storms.

Adaptation won’t slow the warming of the Earth’s surface, but it will give communities the resilience to absorb its damaging effects. And that’s at least as essential. Climate change may be a global phenomenon, but its impact on regions varies widely. “Adaptation enables us to intelligently tailor our response,” writes former British politician Nigel Lawson in An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, his critical analysis of the science of climate change.

Critics contend that adapting our societies to the effects of global warming is not enough. According to Joe Romm, an influential climate change blogger, we will experience so many extreme weather events that our capacity to adapt will be overwhelmed. “I think the term ‘adaptation’ doesn’t make it clear enough that it’s going to be very hard,” says Romm. “I fear that what people describe as ‘adaptation’ is going to be a lot of suffering.”

Others believe that even the suggestion of accepting that the Earth is warming will irrevocably damage our ability to combat climate change by mitigation, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, adaptation has long been a politically incorrect idea. Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore accurately described the sentiment in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance: “Believing that we can adapt to just about anything is ultimately a kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react in time to save our skin.”

Of course, the two strategies—adaptation and mitigation—can peacefully co-exist. Roger Pielke, Jr., author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming, thinks it’s unfortunate that they are often portrayed as opposites. “No matter what part of natural threats are due to climate change, it still makes sense to build better dikes and have evacuation plans,” he says. “Adaptation and mitigation address different issues on different time scales with different effects.”

And yet, with a little goodwill, the agreement world leaders reached in Copenhagen in 2009 can be called a breakthrough. It mentions the word “adaptation” no less than 11 times, just one fewer than “mitigation,” which has been pursued—with little success—since the historic 1992 climate change convention adopted during the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. And though it is still unclear how to raise and distribute the funds necessary to help countries adapt to a warmer world, experts say this hurdle will be much easier to jump. Can a change of focus from mitigation to adaptation breathe new life into a dead-end conversation that threatens to lose the public’s interest?

The realization that living creatures are capable of adapting to a changing environment is hardly revolutionary. Over the millennia, humanity has become quite proficient at it. People are constantly devising creative solutions. They develop innovative technology; they subdue natural threats; they adjust to the change; they move away. Temperature variations are not new, either. Humanity has survived earlier eras that were colder or warmer than today and with vastly fewer financial and technological means, let alone scientific predictions on the changes to come.

Humanity is far from alone in its ability to adapt. In a warmer world, birds fly higher where the air is cooler, or they move to more suitable areas. Squirrels in northern Canada’s Yukon have adapted to spring’s earlier arrival by giving birth 18 days sooner than their great-grandparents did, enabling them to profit from the pine cones that appear earlier in the year. Because Europe’s warmer spring makes caterpillars turn into butterflies sooner, titmice lay their eggs sooner so the chicks can still eat the caterpillars. A recent study from the University of British Columbia demonstrated that sticklebacks can easily tolerate a change in temperature of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) over a three-year period.

The problem, of course, is the warming predicted for the coming century. The central conclusion drawn by the IPCC, the UN’s climate panel, is well known: The Earth is gradually warming, primarily as a result of greenhouse gases. By the year 2100, our nearest estimates predict that the average temperature of the Earth’s surface will rise 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.8 degrees Celsius) in the best-case scenario and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) in the worst case. Making predictions further into the future is nearly impossible. These reports, which reflect current ­thinking in climate science, are filled with implications for all kinds of environments, in all kinds of scenarios. But the recommended policy is unambiguous: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Nonetheless, the doubters and skeptics abound. They contend that a blind focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions silences every other potential explanation for global warming. Even if climate activists were to see their dreams of a historic agreement become reality, the Earth might continue to heat up as a result of other causes, the research into which enjoys far less support. Increased solar activity could influence the Earth’s temperature or the impact of atmospheric water vapor and clouds might partially explain global warming, to name just two theories that have been summarily rejected.

That’s why skeptics believe adaptation is more effective. It helps, regardless of the exact cause of climate change, regardless of the success (or failure) of climate negotiations. And some think the modern obsession with greenhouse gases hampers our ability to meet the challenge of arming ourselves against disaster, especially in poor countries.

Moreover—prepare for yet another politically incorrect idea—higher temperatures have advantages, skeptics claim. They point out, for example, that the IPCC predicts food production will increase this century as a result of improved agricultural conditions and that extreme cold always claims more victims than extreme heat. And wouldn’t you know, temperatures are predicted to rise most in the planet’s coldest regions. “With adaptation you can pocket the benefits of the effects of global warming,” says Lawson, “and reduce the harm caused by it.”

Lawson is extremely critical of the climate change debate. “People think that if the problem is caused by man-made carbon dioxide emissions, then the solution must be to reduce them,” he says. “That’s a fallacy. You must do what’s cost-effective and what’s politically realistic.” Others, however, claim that letting nature take its course is too expensive, and the fact that reducing CO2 will be difficult does not mean we shouldn’t try.

What does adaptation look like? If any country can answer that question, it’s the Netherlands. More than 1,000 years ago, Dutch farmers were digging ditches to make the sodden ground arable. The Dutch have successfully tamed the water. The Netherlands is rich in rivers, and more than half its land lies below sea level, yet the country does not live in fear of rapidly rising seas and increased precipitation. Adaptation is a theme familiar to the Dutch.

“If the Netherlands had not learned to adapt to an ever-changing environment, it would have been lost to the sea long ago,” said former Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende when he chaired a 2007 UN climate event session. Balkenende, who lost family members to a 1953 storm that breached the country’s southwestern dikes, proudly described the Delta Works, a complex project built in the Netherlands in 1986 and consisting of reinforced dikes and dunes, closed-off sea inlets and storm surge barriers.

Now, the Netherlands is anticipating the variables inherent in climate change. Engineers are investigating the value of raising dikes and widening rivers. Project developers are building neighborhoods filled with floating homes. Planners are designating areas that can be temporarily submerged when rivers overflow. Urban developers are considering residential areas built on raised embankments. Architects are placing meters for water and electricity in attics rather than on ground floors. On the international development front, the Netherlands is working with Indonesia to reclaim land near Semarang, a city on the island of Java with more than a million inhabitants, to protect the city center from flooding.

Cities are ideally equipped to prepare for climate change, says Matthew Kahn, a professor of environmental economics at UCLA and author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future. “In cities, people live and work inside, relative to farmers in rural areas, so urbanites can protect themselves and their buildings with ventilation and insulation,” Kahn writes. “When we build houses, bridges and cities, we can take expectations of a changing climate into account.” He cites the floating homes architect Thom Mayne developed for New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their city as a case in point.

Kahn, whose book is reviled by climate activists, has complete faith in the free market. “If you have 7 billion people worried about climate change, that’s a major economic opportunity,” he explains. According to Kahn, entrepreneurs will recognize the market potential of innovations that allow us to soften the effects of global warming, from energy-efficient air conditioners to flood-proof homes. “Historically, cities are centers of innovation, where people have always come up with new ideas to cope with a changing world—and now, a changing climate.”

But Romm wonders if that optimism is realistic. “People knew New Orleans would be flooded one day, yet nobody built levees,” he counters. “And now… years after Katrina, it still doesn’t have enough protection against a similar disaster.”

A common argument advanced by proponents of adaptation is that the alternative, mitigation, is much harder on developing nations. Emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil have made it clear that they are not interested in tempering their explosive growth by lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Poor countries are equally uninterested and have subtly noted that they are not the source of the problem in any case, an understandable viewpoint. Poor countries hope to become more affluent as quickly as possible before reserving money to solve a problem slated for the future. In Lawson’s words, “It’s immoral to ask the people in developing countries to cut back on their carbon emissions when they are dealing with poverty and disease.”

Poor countries are more vulnerable than rich countries to the expected increase in flooding, droughts, hurricanes and heat waves. This isn’t because they’ll be confronted with more natural disasters, but because economic development provides insurance against a disaster’s aftershocks; those who have things of value ensure they’re protected.

That also explains why the earthquake in Haiti claimed so many more lives than the considerably harsher earthquake in Chili six weeks later. In the UN’s Human Development Index, which weighs factors such as the size of a country’s economy and its citizens’ average life expectancy, Haiti is near the bottom at No. 149 while Chili comes in at a respectable 44, between Hungary and Croatia.

To Indur Goklany, a science and technology policy analyst for the U.S. Department of the Interior, the situation is clear. “In developing countries, the adaptational capacity is currently low. And so we need more economic development. If these countries had more economic progress, they would be better capable of adapting.”

Interestingly enough, economic growth is precisely what experts—including those at the IPCC—predict for a warmer world. And that growth is expected to be spectacular. Even in the most somber scenario—in which the IPCC assumes runaway population growth, minimal technological advancement and the lowest standard of living—rich countries would grow 1 percent every year; poor countries would grow 2.3 percent. At the end of the century, our great-grandchildren in rich countries would be two-and-a-half times wealthier than we are today; in poor countries, the figure would be a stunning nine times wealthier.

Amid the warnings that future generations will be worse off and we must invest heavily to avert doom, this math supports adaptation advocates. “I can’t see the logic in putting aside money for decades without any obvious benefit,” Goklany says. “Developing countries have many immediate threats, but global warming isn’t one of them.”

This optimism about the opportunities the future holds is seldom shared by climate activists. Romm puts it this way: “People are kidding themselves if they think we’re going to be so rich that we can buy our way out of devastation.” Critics claim that economic growth will slow down, not speed up, as a result of climate change, and a reliance on adaptation, they argue, could mean that investments in clean technologies, for example, will be neglected. A change of focus from mitigation to adaptation can be viewed as a pragmatic escape from political deadlock, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. It’s also possible, perhaps even likely, that environmental groups’ vested interests and politicians’ maneuvering will prolong the search for a way to prevent climate change. Whatever you think about mitigation versus adaptation, delay is certainly something we cannot afford.

Marco Visscher wrote about James Lovelock’s climate predictions in the November 2009 issue and has been adjusting well ever since.

Photo By: Mikko Luntiala