Our options for dealing with climate change fall into three broad categories: mitigation, adaptation, and retreat. The amount of mitigation we do will determine whether we adapt or retreat. It’s quite simple, the more mitigation we do in the near term, the less retreating we’ll have to do. Whether we choose to stay or not, we will be spending a great deal of time and energy on adapting to the changes.
Mitigation is the first option. It’s what most people think of when they think of “climate action”. It’s what we should have been doing for the past 50 years rather than burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels. Mitigation means reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, until we reach carbon negativity (drawing more carbon from the atmosphere than we emit). If this were 1980, I’d advocate for throwing all our resources into this option. Back then we still had time for this approach.
While we should obviously still put resources into mitigation, after all the more carbon we emit, the worse things will get, we can no longer put all our eggs in this basket. As I’ve said, climate change is already here. The weather is already weird and getting weirder, and it’s too late to stop things from getting worse in the near term. Mitigation should remain our top priority, especially since global carbon emissions continue to increase. The sooner we cap our emissions and begin drawing them down, the better.
The second option is adaptation. This is already happening in many places. This means building resilience, it means changing our society in order to deal with the new reality. Adaptation can take many forms, here are just a few interesting examples:
In low-lying places like Bangkok and the Netherlands, they have designed parks that double as huge rainwater collection systems. These parks are designed to flood when it rains and divert water from homes and businesses. However, they also serve as recreational areas when the water level is lower. Increasing green space and building resilience against flooding.
Inspired by the “Victory Gardens” during World War II, people have begun planting “Climate Victory Gardens” which serve as both mitigation and adaptation. These gardens reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and build resilience against disruptions to the food supply chain.
Residents in California have begun fireproofing their homes in anticipation of increased and unrelenting wildfire activity now and in the future.
There are many more examples of adaptation. Some of them are being done by a city or state governments, others are being implemented by non-profits, individuals, and even businesses. However, adaptation is not always the answer. Once must way the cost of adapting against the likelihood of success.
That brings us to the final option: retreat. This means, quite simply, abandoning places that are no longer suitable for human activity. This is by far the most controversial and difficult of the three options. In reality, a lot of people live in places that are not overly suitable for human habitation, like flood plains, deserts, fire zones and the like. It didn’t make sense when people first moved to these places, and it will make even less sense in the future.
Some places will simply become uninhabitable. For example, Southeast Texas has been hit by five so called “500 year floods” since 2014. While a major city like Houston is probably not going anywhere (they will be taking the “adaptation” approach), there are certainly smaller and poorer towns that won’t be able to cope with the flooding. Their homes may become uninsurable, the government may use eminent domain, or the people may simply get tired of rebuilding.
This is true of several regions around the country, including the majority of costal areas and towns. NOAA projects that the best case scenario is 12 inches of sea level rise by 2100. Under a business as usual scenario, that projection rises to eight feet which would be catastrophic for nearly every coastal community on Earth. Sea level rise is only one of the factors coming for coastal areas, they’re also highly vulnerable to the bigger, stronger, and wetter storms that we’re already seeing. Storms that are going to get worse.
In other parts of the country, the issue will be lack of water, or fires, or mudslides. Big, rich communities may be able to adapt, but other communities will simply waste away. Surely much of this retreat will be involuntary, but we may also begin retreating proactively, this is called managed retreat. It allows government programs to assist with relocation, and ideally it saves lives, both literally and financially.
Managed retreat is obviously a controversial topic, especially in a country that prides itself on giving its own government the middle finger as often as possible. But, unfortunately, it’s already becoming necessary. Private insurance is refusing to insure properties in a growing number of disaster-prone areas, and I expect that trend to accelerate in the future. It would be very bad policy for the government to swoop in and insure these properties rather than just helping people move (and ideally purchasing the property for a fair price).
Which of these three options we choose will depend on a great number of factors. Of course, mitigation remains supremely important, but we’re past the point where we can simply mitigate and expect things to stay the same. We need to determine which places are worth protecting and which places are simply too costly for us to remain.
Unfortunately, many of the states that are most at risk have chosen to elect leadership that barely acknowledges climate change, and is unlikely to doing anything proactive. This means that it is incumbent upon each of us to evaluate the risks that we face due to climate change, and determine our own best course of action. If we think we live in an area that will become uninsurable, it makes sense to leave sooner rather than later. If we think we handle what’s to come, then it makes sense to begin adapting, whatever that means.
Of course, I realize that many people simply don’t have the resources to adapt or to move. And others may not really care because they don’t expect to live long enough for it to matter. For those of us who expect to be here for another 40-50 years or more, these decisions will be critical for our long-term safety and prosperity.
The Mangrove 