Adaptation and Mitigation - which to focus on?

The Coronavirus emergency has moved center stage and demands urgent responses. It may temporarily reduce carbon emissions as economic activity and energy use falls off, but that doesn’t mean the climate emergency has gone away, or is any less urgent. Short term cuts in CO2 emissions due to COVID-19 responses, however welcome, will not reduce climate change impacts for some while. So there will still be a need for urgent emergency ameliorative responses - including measures to deal with continuing climate change impacts, flood rescue operations, firefighting and so on. In addition, there will be a need for longer term adaptation to climate change, where possible, for example by investing in enhanced sea-rise protection in flood-prone areas. 

All of this costs money, which may be scarce given the need to combat the Coronavirus. However, some of these climate impact protection measures will boost the GDP, and may also save money, by reducing damage and social costs, at least in the short term. But they will not deal with the fundamental climate problem, which will get worse if emissions continue to rise. We need to mitigate them. And that too can be costly.

The term ‘mitigation’ is usually used to refer to measures aimed at avoiding or reducing carbon emission, which will ultimately reduce impacts.  However, finding the financial resources to do that can be a problem, especially for poorer countries. By contrast, adaptation can often deal with local impacts in the short-term, and it is likely to be cheaper than mitigation, for example by the development of renewables. If that is so, then adaptation may be all that poorer countries, hard it by climate crises, can afford, with, in any case, mitigation not being able to reduce local climate-related problems quickly. So mitigation may be deferred, leaving emission reduction to others to deal with. 

This may be understandable, but, given that there will be competition for funding for climate related actions, if a focus on adaptation occurs on a wide scale globally, that could reduce overall emission reduction efforts, these being the only long term global solution to climate problems. We have to act.  If nothing is done to halt or reduce emissions, the impacts will get worse, making adaptation progressively harder, more expensive, and in the end futile. So there are choices to be made.

It is the same with carbon offsetting via carbon removal, using Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) and carbon sequestration systems. At best they can just buy time. At worst, investing in them can deflect and delay the development of renewables and upgraded efficiency, arguably the only long term energy options for avoiding climate change. Certainly lumping CCS, NETs, and carbon offsets in with zero carbon renewables in ‘net zero carbon’ policies is fraught with problems.

If the expansion of renewables can be accelerated fast enough, these mostly  untested artificial carbon removal options should not be needed. But even if we do want some carbon removal, planting more trees and adopting new farming practices are, arguably better options for sequestration. That said, while there are many additional environmental benefits associated with planting (and protecting) trees, natural carbon sequestration may not be that much better or more viable in long-term climate terms than artificial negative carbon sequestration. Both do remove carbon from the air, but, in either case, we will not be able to continue to do that indefinitely, finding room for ever increasing amounts, if fossil emissions are still expanding. Which means that personal or corporate carbon offset schemes, which, for a fee, offer to plant trees or to support other carbon removal options so as to compensate for carbon emissions (for example from flying), may be increasingly problematic. Certainly they do not help deal with the problem at source. That can only be done by investing in zero carbon generation or energy saving projects (which, admittedly, some of the better offset schemes do), or, more directly, by not using energy, for example by not flying or driving.

Lifestyle changes like that will cut emissions, and some see them as adaptation responses, forced on us by climate change. Indeed, you could see all the above in that light- mitigation as an adaptive response.  In some ways, the attempt to put everything into mitigation or adaptation categories, or in carbon removal or carbon reduction categories, is pointless. Investing in renewables or energy efficiency will in the end reduce impacts, and so may carbon removal, at least for a while.  However, there are differences in their viability over time - the classification categories are not just academic. Indeed, it can be argued that adaptation should be treated as only the option of last resort, given that too much of a focus on adaption, just like too much of a focus on carbon removal, may slow emission reduction/avoidance. Certainly neither are long term solutions.  

You might say we need to do it all, avoid/reduce emissions where-ever possible and adapt to their impacts where you can’t.  However, it has been argued that there are some  fundamental conflicts, including social equity conflicts:  ‘investments in emission reduction benefit everyone while adaptation only benefits the party that undertakes it’. In addition, some adaptive responses, for example, using energy and materials to build more dikes, can lead to more emissions. So of course can the more obvious adaptive response– ramping up air conditioning, unless it’s renewable energy powered.  More dramatically, if nothing is done to halt emissions, the scale of adaptation that may be needed could overwhelming us- massive health and food shortage problems, massive migration of climate refugees.  All of this continuing increasing, as emission rise.

We have to get on with mitigation, fast…while also preparing for the worst as best we can. The good news is that renewables are getting cheaper, so it may be easier, including for poorer countries. However, the future could still be grim. Even if fossil fuel use can be halted and we go flat out for renewables and energy saving, or even, despite all its problems, nuclear, it will take time to reduce climate impacts. Indeed, we may be seeing impacts rise for decades ahead, based on emissions that have already been made. Even massive carbon negative carbon removal projects would unlikely to be able to undo that, and that is assuming space can be found to store the CO2. More likely they would be used to offset continuing emissions in the interim. And so, with human suffering mounting, getting the short and long term priorities right on mitigation and adaptation wont be easy, or uncontroversial. Indeed, some even say forced adaption can have positive outcomes in terms of changed lifestyles and trading patterns…

Well maybe. In similar vein, some have said that the impact of the coronavirus may in fact be positive, the reduction in emissions from the lockdowns saving more lives than the virus takes. Even more optimistically, some hope that we will get used to a cut back lifestyle e.g. with no flying. I have to say it doesn’t look like that at present. More likely, if the virus goes away, we will rebound back to full-on consumerism again.  But who knows- things may change for the better.