COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 17 of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Mitigation would also mean replacing these carbon drivers with more renewable and sustainable energy sources, like solar power and wind farms. Climate adaptation would involve adjusting societal systems to be more resilient to the effects of climate change—something that’s already happening in many places around the world. Climate adaptation encompasses initiatives like growing more drought-resistant crops, building new infrastructure for flood zones and installing air conditioners to combat rising temperatures. Climate mitigation should be the obvious choice, from both an environmental and financial perspective, Sahagian says. He explains that climate adaptation is essentially sticking a Band-Aid on the issue, without actually doing anything to solve the underlying problem. Climate change is going to continue to get worse if we don’t do anything about it, which means more and more investments will be needed to adapt to the effects of climate change. “Economic analyses indicate that the cost of adaptation to climate change will be much greater than the cost of mitigation,” he explains. “It will be more costly to turn to adaptation to try to manage things like agricultural disruptions, damages to coastal cities and infrastructure, and impacts of extreme events. “We’re going to have to pay, no matter what,” he says. “But, we’ll have to pay a lot more if we let climate change continue to get worse.” A sticking point with mitigation is that it would need to be universally adopted in order to be effective because climate change is a global issue, with global emissions fueling the problem. And, since climate change is one of the most contentious political issues of our time, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, says Sahagian. “Congress won’t even talk about mitigation,” he says. Sahagian believes that most people don’t understand the true value of mitigation and the true cost of adaptation, which is why there’s less support for mitigation. It’s easier for people to spend less on the problem now, even if it means accepting greater long-term costs and consequences. “People pay for fire insurance for their houses even though it’s very unlikely that their house will burn,” he says. “But we’re not buying the insurance against the very likely impacts of climate change on our entire planet. “The thing is, adaptation can be done at the local level by anybody,” he adds. “And, it pays off right away, which is why we’re adapting instead of mitigating, even though it will be way more expensive over time.” The Injustice of Adaptation Adaptation is an appealing choice for many groups, government officials and individuals because they can see an immediate way that it will benefit them—and protect them from the consequences of climate change. But, one of the biggest problems with adaptation is that it often leaves the most vulnerable populations behind, says Holland. There are rampant examples of how the climate crisis disproportionately affects disadvantaged communities. Poorer groups and people of color are often hit harder by environmental events like pollution, heat and extreme weather. And, “ Higher latitudes like the Arctic are seeing really significant warming, even faster than the rest of the planet.”
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