Monbiot on adaptation and mitigation

George Monbiot’s dire new column highlights how the enormous danger associated with climate change has produced action that is grossly inadequate. Furthermore, it challenges the idea that we will be able to deal with it later by ‘adapting.’ He argues that the costs of doing so will be massive, some impacts will be impossible to lessen through any level of spending, and that rich nations presented with the immediate reality of massive climatic challenge will never have the will to assist poorer states.

It remains vital to understand that adaptation is pointless without mitigation. There is no adaptation possible, if the 5.5 to 7.1°C ‘business-as-usual’ path projected by the Hadley Centre is the one we follow. In order to have a world where adaptation remains a physical possibility, we need to be aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions, making sure their peak concentration does not reach a level where feedbacks will re-organize the world into something deeply hostile to humanity.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan