Kurt Cobb: Why climate change adaptation could make things worse

Because many of the proposals for adaptation to climate change require further extensive release of greenhouse gasses, they will only make climate change worse.

The late television commentator Eric Sevareid once said, “The chief cause of problems is solutions.” And, so it is with proposals to adapt to climate change.

The main strategy which suggests itself when addressing climate change is to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases which are its main cause. Certainly, there has been much talk of reducing emissions up to 80 percent by 2050. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much concrete action.

As a result, most serious climate scientists agree that the Earth will experience at least some warming no matter what we do now and that some measures focused on adapting to the consequences of that warming are now advisable.

Perhaps the most widely agreed consequence will be a rise in sea level that will threaten low-lying coastal areas around the world. The consensus rests at around 1 meter by 2100, but the numbers are highly uncertain. What will countries do in response? Naturally, they will spend enormous sums of money to defend their coastlines. In the process they will create vast additional greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Because 86 percent of the world’s energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels. Until that changes, adaptation strategies that involve energy expenditures will only reinforce climate change.

Scitizen