Where’s The Adaptation Planning?
Jack Layton has once again introduced a climate change bill with (once again) mitigation at its’ heart – when are the mitigation people going to start acknowledging reality and start talking about adaptation?
The Climate Change Accountability Act sets strict targets for greenhouse-gas emissions and calls for an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, using 1990 levels as a base.
It sets a medium-range target of a 25 per cent reduction by 2020.
Good idea Jack, except that even if we were to (possibly through some grand miracle of technology discovered later this very afternoon) somehow achieve those targets it still wouldn’t come close to reversing a process that has been gaining momentum for over 200 years – it would only slow it down somewhat.
It’s all well and good to talk about mitigation, and I think we should, but the reality is that the chances of stopping (let alone reversing) what is already well underway before some very significant negative changes are upon us are somewhere between slim and none.
Why, at this (very) late state in the game, are we not giving adaptation strategies at least equal airtime?
stageleft: “Why, at this (very) late state in the game, are we not giving adaptation strategies at least equal airtime?”
Exactly. I wish I had found this site earlier in my blog life. I have renewed hope. Reading people who actually think is so refreshing.
I sent a link of your post to my MP.
Whooee! “Renewed hope” or any kinda hope is the reason we ain’t preparin’ fer what we oughta know is comin’ down the road. Hope is what sells and hopelessness ain’t. Even when the situation is hopeless, don’t expect a politician to admit. And politicians run things.
When we start talkin’ adaptation, we go against the two main adversaries in the climate change debate. The deniers don’t want to adapt something they refuse to admit the existence of. The treehuggers don’t wanna admit that the war is as good as lost.
Perhaps, the problem is also related to the solution. If the climate change scenario plays out as predicted, the planet will be incapable of supporting the population. We’ve had a taste of food riots this year. we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Who wants to talk about culling a third of the world’s population? We ain’t even got the guts to look the present day starvation in the face.
JB
“Why, at this (very) late state in the game, are we not giving adaptation strategies at least equal airtime?”
I’m with you, but I don’t think the ideas to reduce should be totally abandoned – rather a balance of those things that can help reduce AND those things that help us adapt.
Getting the City of Ottawa out of the business of denying people building permits to install solar panels and wind turbines in their homes would be a start….
I’m with Mike – we have to be concerned with BOTH mitigation and adaptation, lest we end up having to adapt too much.
@Mike – Never said we should abandon mitigation, but right now the total focus seems to be on reversing something we can’t even realistically slow down very much within the lifetimes of our grandchildren.
It’s too late to be totally wrapped up in “we need to do something about it” at the expense of how will we deal with it.
On a trip north last fall, people spoke about the possibilities of existing roads slipping into the no-longer-permafrost, entire villages needing relocation due to same, formerly safe sources of drinking water newly infested with parasites and harmful bacteria previously unknown before climate change and the likely need for the building of expensive water treatment plants. In some areas of the Arctic, these are today’s realities. In other areas, a future concern. Yet some of the people also spoke how they have faced dramatic climate and environmental changes in the past. One person said that survival on the land is all about adaptation to constantly changing conditions.
In many ways, ordinary people are a lot more prepared to deal with, to mitigate and to develop adaptation strategies, than either governments, business or scientific institutions. All need to get together to plan together and to work together. (sigh – yeah, right)
Oh, and I forgot to mention… Nice showboating there, Jack. I’m with you on this one SL.
Adaptation to climate change made us the clever monkeys we are today.
Clever enough to foul our own nest.
I would like to see a shift of focus back to preventing air, water and soil pollution. As an adaptation strategy, a healthy Earth will better sustain us through changes to it’s climate.
One wonders aloud why the NDP would be interested in implementing job-killing environmental quotas at a time when workers need jobs?
Hmm. Well, maybe because simplistic, absolutist formulations of the issue like that lose their relevance about the time we all achieve puberty?
Just a suggestion.
Balby, whose question are you answering?
Without reading the details of the plan I can’t comment on it specifically, though teh NDPs plans thus far have been big on ambitious targets but weak on actual implementation.
“it still wouldn’t come close to reversing a process that has been gaining momentum for over 200 years – it would only slow it down somewhat.”
Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t an “80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, using 1990 levels as a base” within the ballpark (it may have been 90%) of what most climate scientists say we need to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Obviously some amount of climate change is already in the pipeline, but if these targets are met by the world (no easy feat mind you) then we should be speared the worst of it.
Without these drastic cuts in GHG emissions any adaptation will be an insurmountable task.
Reducing our dependence on conventional forms of energy will stimulate the development and use of (hopefully) less harmful modes, and potentially less costly modes. Or at least, so the story goes.
Energy reduction is a form of adaptation, since if the doomsday predictions pan out, we WILL have to get by with less energy than now. I don’t know the bones of Layton’s plan, but maybe he’s just framing it, as earlier commenters said, so as not to scare the common folk.
And ScruffyDan, adaptation is never insurmountable, but its pricetag, in lifestyle and lives, keeps going up the longer we wait.
Lets be generous and say that a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 helps us avoid the worst impacts of climate change ScruffyDan, and lets further say that through some miracle of national environmental consciousness Canada even achieves that target – then what?
Did The U.S. follow our lead? Did India? China? Mexico? Russia? Did any of the big emitters?
Climate change is a global phenomena – what, on a global level, did our 50% reduction achieve if the rest of the world didn’t do the same?
I have yet to see one shred of evidence to indicate that if Canada bites the bullet hard that any other country in the world would suddenly get a bad case of the guilts and follow us; that’s not to say that we shouldn’t work towards reductions, we should, but we should also be realistic about the big picture and how we are going to adapt to the new reality that is (not so slowly) being created around us.
Raphael, without seeing the text of the legislation we cannot be entirely sure that the NDP is fronting “job-killing environmental quotas” – although I suspect that would be the ultimate (at least short term) result of the process.
– and even if it is that’s not the point of the post. The point is that people need, IMO, to dig their heads out of the sand and quit believing that we can slow the climate change train appreciably – without unprecedented global cooperation (something that is not going to happen on any significant level) the simple fact is that we cannot, so we might as well start developing some plans for living with it.
Hey, neat! It gave me an Irish flag! Teh internyets is cool.
The road to hell and all that Raph. I think they really do mean well, they are just going at it the wrong way – as a former Dipper myself, I can attest to the real altruism of members at the grassroots level. Problem is, most of them have a shocking lack of economic understanding and an ideological outlook that boils down to “government can do no wrong, if the right folks are in charge”.
I agree with SL and Doug – more focus on adaption is needed, because right now there is NO focus on it and adaption is an area that humans excel at. It can drive innovation.
Of course, it will require a shift in the way people think. For instance, people have to accept the idea that our electrical grid can be a radically decentralized, heterogeneous mix of power generation technologies, rather than the highly centralized and monopoly behemoth with few generation choices that we have now.
Good point, Mike. It makes us all the more aware of just how out of touch our governments are. Ginty has earmarked the lion’s share ($26 Bn) of new Ontario energy investment for nuclear mega-projects. Stuck in the 60’s? 50’s, maybe?
By setting aside tens of billion$ for nukes and skimping on financing alternatives, renewables and distributed energy, the Ontario gummint is taking the exact opposite course from what was suggested by their own Energy Commissioner, Gordon Miller.
Of course, mega-projects are sold to the public with the usual pitch: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” Now that the economy’s tanking, that mantra resonates. Bruce Power is rubbing it’s hands together with glee.
I think while gummints are wallowing in denial, many individuals are preparing for the coming crises. I reckon that’s easier to do out here in the sticks. When Ma an’ I go out walkin’ the dogs at night, we often talk about how we’ll deal with the climate change apocalypse. I reckon we got a few years to work on it and I ain’t exactly a spring chicken. I might not live to see the chaos but I’ll die happier knowing that I spent some time, money and effort on adaptation.
JB
I got nothing in particular against nuclear, but your point is right JB. Why the MEGA projects?
Carleton University has has a working, though miniature, nuclear reactor in its physics department for well over 25 years, producing power and isotope for shcool experimentation with no issue or accidents. If we must use nuclear as one of the options, why not decentralized and dispersed, smaller breeder reactors that fit in as one small part of the grid, rather than the big-ticket, one size fits all magic bullet solutions the government keeps suggesting? They could supplement and augment wind, solar and hydro all over the province, especially Northern Ontario (where the transportation costs of Uranium would be pretty low).
A nuke in every home. Kewl. Hey, we can call the personal home nuclear reactor the… (wait for it…) Homer.
As someone who grew up in a nuclear energy province– and to this day still doesn’t glow green in the dark — I gotta tell ya folks, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Shmo: once again, your genius shines. The Homer. Yes.
The Homer. D’oh!