Climate Change Adaptation vs Mitigation - The Great Debate

There are two major sides to the policy debate around the issues of global warming. One side is advocating for climate change adaption and the other for mitigation.

Mitigation, which is preventing the progression of global warming, is what we hear about the most. This would include mainly cutting global CO2 emissions to reduce the greenhouse effect.

The other side of this policy debate are those advocating for more climate change adaptation. This group is a little pessimistic about our ability to change the climate of an entire planet, and wants to have policies in place to meet the challenges that global warming will bring.

Let's first talk about mitigation policies since that's what we're most familiar with. We'll talk about climate change adaption in more detail a little bit later.

There are many things that cause global warming. It's actually a part of the earth's history to have these cyclical changes in the climate.

The earth has been through many ice ages and heat waves before. But in addition to the natural climate cycles of the earth, we humans also contribute to the warming climate, mostly via our CO2 emissions.

Just about everything causes CO2 emissions it seems like. From cars and trucks, to airplanes, to power plants, to industrial factories and even to cows.

And not only do we produce CO2 emissions, we also cut down the things that absorb them, namely trees. So it seems, climate change is partly man-made. Most scientists don't dispute that these days.

Since global warming is man-made, it also should mean that we can prevent it from happening. That is where the mitigation policy discussion comes in and these are the policies that the entire world is currently focusing on.

It's all about cutting the greenhouse effect causing CO2 emissions these days. Mitigation policies are things like creating hybrid and electric cars.

It also includes capturing carbon on those big smoke stacks on factories. As well as creating clean renewable energy like wind and solar power. All of these will cut CO2 emissions, but will it be enough?

No doubt, global warming and climate change is certainly man-made thanks to the industrial revolution. There's too much science behind that fact that it is indeed occurring and that we are causing it.

But some economists put the price tage for trying to mitigate it at around $50 trillion. And at the end of the day, it might mitigate it for just a few years when all is said and done.

In addition, it is much easier for us in the developed world to try to cut emissions. For us it means driving a Honda instead of a GM. Or using energy efficient light bulbs. Or putting in carbon filters for factories.

But for the rest of the developing world, it is incredibly difficult to cut emissions. Green energy is a luxury that most third world countries struggling to survive can afford. When you make less than $1 a day, which more than a billion people do, you hardly think about the impact of global warming on the rest of the world.

Adaptation Policy

Climate change adaptation policies seek to not prevent global warming, but dealing with it when it's impact is felt around the world. And there will be many effects of global warming to deal with to be sure.

Proponents of adaptation policies claim that although humans have a hand in causing climate change, we won't be able to do anything to prevent it's inevitable arrival. They say reducing CO2 emissions won't be enough to really do anything.

Some experts say that we would need as many as 50 Kyoto-like treaties to delay global warming by just a few years and by only a few degrees. That would only make sense since the earth's atmosphere and climate is a really big ship to steer.

In addition, many economists say that bringing enough CO2 cutting policies to actually make a different has a good change of sending the world into an economic recessions. We do a good enough job doing that ourselves without trying to do massive cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions.

So advocates for climate change adaptation seeks to create policies that will deal with the impact of global warming, especially for the most vulnerable: the world's poor.

Some climate change adaptation policies include building dykes and damns for low-lying coastlines that are in danger of being swallowed up by rising ocean levels. These technologies currently exist in places like the Netherlands to give them additional landmass. An adaptation effort would bring these technologies to poor countries and vulnerable areas.

Another huge problem we have today is clean water. About a billion people in the world live without access to clean water today. Water will be another increasingly scarce resource as global warming approaches.

A way to bring in climate change adaptation would be to provide clean water for every single person on this planet. It's very possible to do and will cost much less than trying to mitigate global warming.