Adaptation can pay off even when a person acts alone, out of pure self-interest
storms like Hurricane Dorian, those affected have decisions to make. Should they invest in cellar pumps and better drainage? Should they rebuild with more robust design and materials? Should they move? These judgments are informed by a harsh reality: the weather will get worse. Seas will be higher, rain more diluvial and storms fiercer. People with means will naturally adjust—as they should. Adaptation is essential to reduce the human and economic costs of climate change.
All this means that adaptation is likely to play a large role in humanity’s response to climate change. Indeed, research suggests that the price of agricultural land already incorporates the expected impact of climate change. Consumers already react to extreme weather events. Purchases of air-conditioning systems rise after heatwaves, for example.
That is in many ways a good thing. Predictions of the costs of climate change are often far higher when analysts rule out the possibility of adaptive behaviour. A study published last year considering the global costs of coastal flooding, for example, estimated that floods will reduce real globalin 2200 by 4.5%—unless the effects of adaptive investments and migration are considered, in which case the loss works out as just 0.11%.
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