A fight over whether climate science is taking political positions is really about whether eliminating fossil fuels is more important than adapting
with journalist Robinson Meyer, about a paper he had co-authored in the prominent journal Nature about the impact of global warming on wildfires. He described how, rather than write the paper as he thought best, he had tailored its message to what he thought the journal editors wanted.
But Brown’s own words are much more nuanced, and don’t express the same intent as his actions do. Whether this reflects naïvete, confusion, or disingenuousness on his part is a question about him that doesn’t interest me. He raises some broader issues, however, that are worth talking about regardless.
Mitigation—cutting carbon emissions—is a global problem, and at its root a simple one. A ton of carbon emitted anywhere has the same global impact, and we aren’t reducing emissions nearly fast enough to meet any safe climate target. The problem is political, economic, and cultural; we have to get people, governments, and corporations to do the right things.
On the other hand, if one were not concerned about holding the polluter accountable, but instead only about reducing the amount of illness as much as possible, then one should take a holistic look at all the factors that could cause the disease. This is analogous to climate adaptation. Historically, it’s true that both climate science and the media have been more concerned about mitigation than adaptation. Talking about adaptation used to be seen as giving up on cutting emissions. This was a defensible view back when the impacts of warming were mostly in the hypothetical future. It isn’t any more, because we’re clearly starting to see the impacts now. While most climate professionals understand this, echoes of the anti-adaptation stance do linger.
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