Adaptation is common sense

There is ever-increasing scientific research to show that climate change is already wreaking havoc with society, not just at the spectacular and devastating scale that we saw in Valencia, but often at a more subtle level. However, with all predictions for climate change to continue to worsen as we keep putting more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere, we must accelerate our efforts and make some different decisions. 

The first and most obvious is that we must cut fossil fuel emissions. If we don’t, the scale and rate of further disruption will keep growing and could accelerate beyond our ability to react. The need for society to adapt to meet the challenges of a changing climate are not optional: even if all emissions were to stop today, the climate has already changed so we must react to the level of warming that is ‘baked in’. 

However, it is equally true that we need to start adapting, because we are going to see more and more extreme events that cause damage and loss of life, and it would be utterly irresponsible not to respond. As the awful flash floods in Valencia demonstrated, after a year’s worth of rain fell in two hours, the damage can be horrific. Not just for the terrible short-term personal and financial impacts of floods, drought, wildfires, storm damage, etc, but also because, alongside the dreadful loss of life, the physical damage from these sudden events can take years or even decades to recover from. 

In a preliminary report, World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who investigate global warming’s role in extreme weather, found that the rainfall which struck Spain was 12% heavier due to climate change and that the weather event experienced was twice as likely. 

I have a genuine fear that we have become so embedded in a desire or need for austerity that we are not going to find the money to adapt, let alone mitigate, climate change for at least another decade, by which stage we will start to see more consequences like the floods in Valencia or the forest fires in Greece, or many of the other obvious signs that are becoming ever more frequent and ever more evident. 

Adaptation is common sense. It is about making changes to our lives, infrastructure and society that protect people from the worst of these consequences. Protecting the natural environment; supporting businesses in adapting to climate change; adapting infrastructure such as electricity networks and railways; protecting buildings and their surroundings, for example from hotter temperatures; protecting public health and communities; mitigating international impacts on the UK, including on food supplies and imports. 

It includes building flood defences, natural or otherwise; adapting crops to drier conditions; making infrastructure more robust by repairing and reinforcing key buildings and transport links, like the road at the Rest and Be Thankful; finding ways to cool urban spaces, such as painting roofs white; minimising disease and heat impacts on health by installing cooling systems or managing the spread of disease; or reducing the incidence of wildfires by minimising risk and creating fire breaks. 

Alongside obvious projects like flood defence schemes, there is a lot going on in the background to help us adapt. But there are still many challenges. Disease vectors are changing with heat, and physical storm damage to property is making it harder to insure buildings and activities. There are a multitude of challenges, and we are not yet sufficiently tackling them. 

Adaptation has always been seen as a last resort, a response to a failure to reduce our emissions, something that should not be spoken about lest it discourage mitigation measures. It is time for that to change. 

While there are some different decisions that might be made in responding to a 100-year event versus a 20-year event, there is still a tendency not to plan for events that seem unlikely or extreme. But extreme is becoming the norm. We need to adapt to the climate that exists today, as well as what is needed to respond to future warming. The longer it takes for us to respond, the greater that response will need to be. 

In Scotland, we are starting to see an increasing focus on adaptation, on protecting people and communities from the worst impacts, but this is still at a relatively early stage and it is a complicated thing to do well without simply pushing the problem elsewhere. 

Adaptation is a very real need and has the potential to touch all of our lives. It is an essential component of any response to climate change, otherwise we risk losing a great deal to accelerating temperatures. However, we still ultimately need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, reminds us, “adaptation alone cannot keep up with the impacts of climate change, which are already worse than predicted.” 

Adaptation is not just a necessity but an opportunity, and if we collectively get this right, we can at the same time improve the lives of people and communities around the globe.