Mitigation Vs Adaptation... The reality of Altruism Vs Saving our asses. Adaptation spending can be made more equitable, of course, if rich countries help pay for poor countries to do it. There’s a glimmering of that in the $100 billion-a-year climate adaptation fund discussed in UN talks. But what’s pledged is already short of what’s needed. Color me skeptical that, as climate damages start biting in developed countries, their leaders are going to propose sending more. The more anxious or afraid we become, the more our brain’s capacity for conscious self-regulation is overwhelmed by deeper fight-or-flight instincts. We become more in-group focused, defensive, and hostile toward outsiders. As the effects of climate change become more pronounced, the likely result is not, as many climate hawks seem to hope, new support for global treaties. The likely result is publics demanding, and politicians scrambling to provide, local adaptations. Climate change is also going to produce a large and powerful adaptation industry. Journalist McKenzie Funk covers that subject in his new book Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming. This is from his interview with Brad Plumer: BP: Oftentimes when you read about how we’ll deal with climate change, there’s this widespread notion that the world will have to cooperate in a variety of ways. We’ll have to work together to cut emissions and deal with the effects of rising temperatures. But as you found, that’s far from inevitable. MF: Yeah, that was the main point of the book. People who are interested in climate change seem to assume that the way out is that everyone will work together. Rich countries will help the developing world, which is going to get hit hardest by climate change. But adaptation isn’t necessarily going to be a let’s-all-work-together thing. Certainly the reaction to climate change that I saw, people weren’t always working together — they were working to save their own asses. And the idea that we’re all going to come together to deal with this is a huge assumption that isn’t much tested. Read more: grist.org/climate-energy/preventing-climate-change-and-adapting-to-it-are-not-morally-equivalent/
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:55:56 +0000
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