Should we focus our efforts on slowing future climate warming (mitigation) or preparing for future climate warming (adaptation), or both? The question is rife with political and practical complexities. I'm sure we'll have many occasions to discuss them soon. But I want to try to put the politics and practicalities aside for a moment and discuss some purely moral aspects of the debate. It's quite an interesting ethical situation, worthy of some head-scratching and navel-gazing from the academic set.
Consider the simple fact that greenhouse gases do not remain localized where they are emitted; they disperse throughout the atmosphere. A unit of GHG is a unit of GHG, no matter its origin. You might conclude, then, that emitting GHG harms everyone on earth equally and reducing emissions helps everyone on earth equally. That means emissions reductions are altruistic -- the economic benefits of emitting GHGs are local, while the climatic benefits of reducing emissions are global.
But that actually understates the altruism of emission reductions. In practice, climate warming does not harm everyone equally. Its costs fall most heavily on particular regions: the Arctic, southern Africa, Asian river deltas, small islands states in the Pacific, etc. These regions tend to be home to poor and developing economies, those least likely to be able to weather the changes. So when we in the U.S. reduce our emissions, we are primarily helping the world's poor and only secondarily helping ourselves.
It's hard to think of any other public policy with broad support that is similarly altruistic (see: our anemic foreign aid budget). Indeed, I sometimes think that the broad support building for climate change mitigation is due in part to the fact that people haven't really noticed its altruistic nature yet.
Contrast that to adaptation. Adaptation is, almost by its very nature, local. Resettling a group of people away from a coastline benefits that group of people. Shifting to water-conserving agricultural techniques in India helps Indians. Building a seawall helps those behind the seawall.
Of course this isn't categorically true. It may be that water-saving agricultural techniques could be developed and then exported. It may be that the U.S. will donate money and expertise to people in Asian river deltas, to help them prepare for more frequent floods. To some extent, methods of adaptation developed one place can help people in other places, if policies are set up to encourage knowledge- and capital-sharing.
But the fact remains that while adaptation may in some limited circumstances be altruistic, mitigation is intrinsically altruistic.
What conclusion should we draw from this fact? That's when you get back into politics, I suppose. I'm inclined to think that self-preserving policies like adaptation are inevitable; especially once climate change's impacts start becoming severe for people in the U.S., you can bet that politicians will scramble to answer the demand for adaptive policies. While it might be nice to think that the resources and attention we'll inevitably direct toward adaptation will not deplete the resources and attention we've put toward mitigation, realistically that seems inevitable.
Which is to say, we've got a window of time here in the U.S. -- time when public concern about global warming is high, but the impacts are not yet so severe as to drive more reactive, self-preservation-focused policies. We've got a window of time in which it may be possible to put in place policies which primarily benefit the world's poor and future generations. Such times are rare; such policies are rare. In my mind, we should take advantage of this window while it is open.
(This discussion leaves aside those policies that serve both goals -- mitigation and adaptation. Obviously we should be actively seeking out and supporting such policies. But that subject is worthy of its own post.)
Comments
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caniscandida Posted 8:59 am
06 Mar 2007
But adaptation must always have an international scope. And the wealthy countries would not be committing themselves to helping the poor countries solely for altruistic reasons -- though that sort of motivation is not absent, as we saw in the relief efforts after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir a year later. Rather, one of the huge likely effects of global warming, we are given to understand, is the displacement of populations, which would directly affect the lives of Europeans and North Americans.
In current politics, we see that the Chinese have an interest in maintaining a stable North Korea, for fear of a wave of immigrants from that country should its government fall; similarly, people in Florida are already worried about an out-of-control influx of refugees from Cuba when Fidel Castro dies. That may seem like a cold calculus, but it is more complicated than that, and can be interpreted in a humanitarian way.
In the same way, if, as is often mentioned, the patterns of climate change and its effects are already under way, and cannot be altogether stopped even by a full regime of mitigation efforts starting today; and if therefore we can suspect that, say, the submersion of Bangladesh will happen in just a matter of time; then the adaptationists must be thinking about what to do with that huge population, which will either drown or move. Is that going to be India's problem uniquely? Well, possibly, but I cannot imagine that people in North America and Europe really want to think like that.
Or, is the term "adaptation" already so narrowly and technically defined that it means only what each country will do in preparation for difficulties within its own territory?
Already we see a controversy over actions with international effects, in the recommended ESA listing of the polar bear. The US environmentalists who are recommending the listing are surely not concerned only with Alaskan polar bears, and screw all the others; they envision that mitigation efforts will benefit all polar bears everywhere, and indeed perhaps all Arctic wildlife. That is why the Alaska state biologist, opposing the listing, argues shrewdly, if unconvincingly, when she warns that the listing of Alaskan polar bears will dangerously increase hunting pressures on Canadian polar bears.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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SMLowry Posted 9:48 am
06 Mar 2007
And while it appears that adaptation efforts benefit only specific places, my personal belief is that because everything is connected, the Earth is one whole, then anything we do that eases the burden on Earth, where ever it happens to be, will benefit the whole Earth. Change happens in places, where we live.
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Thad Miller Posted 11:17 am
06 Mar 2007
Thanks for the post. I'm actually working on a paper on the practical and moral necessity of adaptation (I am not setting it up as either/or).
Two quick points. First, mitigation is intrinsically altuistic assuming we (a) actually reduce enough to make any difference and (b) we know what happens if we reduce by x amount (in other words, reducing to 1990 levels doesn't mean 1990 climate -- no one knows what it means). Second, I would argue that a continued sole focus on mitigation may in fact be intergenerationally inequitable; i.e. without adaptation we will be under taking action with benefits that we will only see far in the future (if at all), while those vulnerability to climate variability today remain so with the added impacts of climate change.
Phd Student, IGERT Urban Ecology Fellow, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
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EliRabett Posted 11:49 am
06 Mar 2007
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David Roberts Posted 2:33 pm
06 Mar 2007
My greatest worry is that we start facing severe stresses before we get on that path -- while we are still enslaved to fossil fuels, armed to the hilt to ensure our supply, in hoc to China, and drowning in consumer debt. A system like that, when put under stress, tends toward greater political and economic inequality, rising nationalism, xenophobia, greater state police power, and declining civil liberties.
Global warming will cause a continual ratcheting up of pressure that could be punctuated by anything from a major spike in the price of oil to a terrorist attack to several years of intense drought. We could retreat into Fortress America and send the military out to claim our piece of the shrinking pie. That would be "adaptation" of a certain sort.
In my mind, mitigation is itself a kind of adaptation. It makes our society more flexible and resilient, better able to surf the coming waves.
www.grist.org
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Zarkov Posted 7:13 pm
06 Mar 2007
An open debate with "Global Climate Change and its proposed causes", as its subject.
But you must realise cars can not have an exhaust emission, and all our energy must be clean electricity generated by the spin of the Earth, which then is stored in salt.
If we are to continue to exist on this planet to be able to colonise other worlds we must leave no footprint on the environment.
All the talk of "the alternative fuels" are all in the same basket as oil.
no oil.
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Thad Miller Posted 11:22 pm
06 Mar 2007
Phd Student, IGERT Urban Ecology Fellow, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
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ltlf653 Posted 12:33 am
07 Mar 2007
Can the goals of mitigation and adaptation be mutually enforcing? What about bringing renewable energy projects to poor, coastal areas to help such places raise revenue for, say, levies or platforms for their houses.
I just heard Van Jones speak the other day and he really emphasized how we can use clean energy development to pull people out of poverty--and by extension, areas vulnerable to eco-disasters! I think his ideas (though generally regarding inner city development) very much apply to this discussion...
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Thad Miller Posted 1:10 am
07 Mar 2007
I definitely view them as mutually reinforcing. In addition to your ideas about renewables, etc, I am working through the following economic logic: adaptation presents a large fixed cost investment. This investment is in jeopordy if you continue to emit GHGs; therefore, you'd seek to protect your investment and reduce GHG emissions. Unfortunately, there has not been any economic work done on this (to my knowledge), but it seems like the logic may hold.
Phd Student, IGERT Urban Ecology Fellow, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
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Jason D Scorse Posted 10:28 am
07 Mar 2007
Second point: Even though altruism may work with a small segment of the population I think relying on altruism as the centerpiece of climate policy is extremely dangerous and misguided and will guarantee that it doesn't happen. I'm not saying that this is what Dave is suggesting, but in my view making clear that dealing with climate change is in a country's national interest is the absolute best way to get action.
J.S.
J.S. teaches environmental economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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David Roberts Posted 10:45 am
07 Mar 2007
I agree with you and Thad that much of what we do in terms of mitigation will also serve the goal of adaptation. I think lots of adaptation proponents are just thinking in terms of early-warning systems and sea walls. But to me, adapting means something deeper -- it means becoming a more flexible, resilient society, in terms of physical infrastructure and settlement patterns, but also in terms of governing institutions and what you could call cultural habits.
www.grist.org
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wiscidea Posted 2:40 pm
07 Mar 2007
Mitigation is also the most practical approach... nothing altruistic about it. The Pentagon itself is looking into how national security will be affected by global climate change. They are expecting wide-spread political instability as the distribution of fresh water, agriculture land, and othe natural resources shift with the climate. Massive refugee problems. Shifts in diseases and agricultural pests. Regions isolating themselves in a futile effort to preserve themselves. New excuses for imposing dictatorships. Sure, it is important to plan ahead and have a plan for adaptation. But it cannot be the primary focus. Those that do adapt will not be immune to events beyond their borders.
It might be less expensive to at least slow down the rate of climate change so that both humans and other species CAN adapt.
Forward!
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wiscidea Posted 2:55 pm
07 Mar 2007
"...adapting means something deeper -- it means becoming a more flexible, resilient society, in terms of physical infrastructure and settlement patterns, but also in terms of governing institutions and what you could call cultural habits."
The longer our species manages to avoid killing itself, the greater the chance we will witness an unprecedented natural disaster... an asteroid, some rare geological event, a cyclic drop in rainfall we have not been around long enough to experience. It would be nice -- and an act of great kindness and morality -- if we set things up so our decendents would not have to cope with political upheaval, starvation, and perhaps the collapse of civilization. And, who knows, we might actually be protecting ourselves or our children from such an event... it could happen next year.
Forward!
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Zarkov Posted 5:28 pm
07 Mar 2007
why is it too late ?
LOL, y'all (including scientists) can't even come to a conclusion re the cause of Global Climate Change that best fits the science.
Y'all are in total denial, y'all totally discount tomorrow. A world full of fantasy, illusion and delusion. Yay for the fair!
Civilisation as we know it is doomed, so how are you going to survive with your swimming pools dry, your SUVs rusting and all your food gone?
Do you know how to light a fire with two sticks ?
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:36 am
08 Mar 2007
I vote for adaptation and enjoyment. I think that your statement that
Its costs fall most heavily on particular regions: the Arctic, southern Africa, Asian river deltas, small islands states in the Pacific, etc.
are completely without substantiation! This is typical of these Grist articles which throw in speculations as if they were facts.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
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greenthinker Posted 12:31 pm
09 Mar 2007
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Zarkov Posted 4:26 pm
09 Mar 2007
no morality left when the wallet is filled.
LOL, Money won't save you, that is certain.
Disgusting to even be having a choice between do nothing and acting to save LIFE on this planet.
Some areas of this world need removing.
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