Climate Change and Where We Are , Session 6, with Rupert Readhttps://youtube.com/watch?v=9h0SfcQFqmQThe sine qua non now is: taking adaptation seriously. Because it’s too late for anything else, anything less. Adaptation - to the climate and biodiversity damage already here and to the worse damage coming - needs to be adequately defined. Shallow, incremental, defensive adaptation (e.g. building hard flood defences) will be worse than nothing if pursued by itself: for it doubles down on the illusion that unmitigated climate damage is civilisationally survivable, and it is high carbon (thus worsening the underlying problem, in a vicious circle). Adaptation must instead be transformative.
The other huge reason to pivot now to adaptation is that as we do so we make the crisis psychologically real: to everyone else, and to ourselves. Whereas deadlines for future action are basically can-kicking exercises. Talking and doing (transformative) adaptation is thereby additionally the most effective way now of motivating realer mitigation/prevention!
This talk concerns how we can adapt transformatively to incipient climate breakdown.