Science Daily - US Companies, Cities, Govt. Agencies Doing Little To Address Likely Climate Shifts

[hatrack]

ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2008) — Organizations in the United States that are at the highest risk of sustaining damage from climate change are not adapting enough to the dangers posed by rising temperatures, according to a Yale report.

"Despite a half century of climate change that has already significantly affected temperature and precipitation patterns and has already had widespread ecological and hydrological impacts, and despite a near certainty that the United States will experience at least as much climate change in the coming decades just as a result of current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, little adaptation has occurred," says Robert Repetto, author of "The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth" and a senior fellow of the United Nations Foundation.

EDIT

"To say that the United States has the technological, economic and human capacity to adapt to climate change does not imply that the United States will adapt," said Repetto. "Without national leadership and concerted efforts to remove these barriers and obstacles, adaptation to climate change is likely to continue to lag."

The report, "The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth," is published by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and is available at http://www.environment.yale.edu/publication-series/climate_change/.

EDIT/END

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081202115427.htm

[The2ndWheel]

1. Doesn't seem like that's just a US problem

"In addition, organizations lack relevant data for planning and forecasting, and the data that are available are typically outdated and unrepresentative of future conditions. Other institutional barriers to adaptation are overcoming or revising codes, rules and regulations that impede change; the lack of clear directions and mandates to take action; political or ideological resistance to the need for responsiveness to climate change; the preoccupation with near-term challenges and priorities and the lingering perception that climate change is a concern only for sometime in the future; and the inertia created by a business-as-usual assumption that future conditions will be like those of the past."

I'd say that's pretty much the case everywhere.

Mainly though, I'd say it's about the fundamental building block of this whole thing. It's not adaptation. It's not about humans adapting to the environment. It's about the environment adapting to humans. As an example, humans can't travel 100 miles in 2 hours. It is physically impossible for a human to to that. So we force the environment to adapt to humans traveling 100 miles in 2 hours. We live in cold climates, but we want it to be warmer when we do. We live in hotter climates, but we want it to be cooler when we do. Look at how we acquire food. We breed a small portion of species, both animal and plant, to our very narrow range of specifications. That forces the environment to adapt to that process. When it does, and we don't like the way it did so, we don't adapt to those changes, we force ever narrower specifications, and round and round we go.

Even attempting to stop or reverse climate change on some planetary scale is imposing our will onto the environment, not adapting to it. Harnessing solar power is not adaptation. Harnessing wind power is not adaptation. Harnessing tidal power is not adaptation. Those are controlling the environment, which will result in the environment adapting once again to our activity, and round and round we will go.

Adaptation, just like conservation, is not part of the plan.

[GliderGuider]

2. .

:thumbsup:

[hatrack]

5. I don't always agree with Kunstler but he did come up with a nice summary of The Problem's essence:

"We'll keep on doing what we do until we can't, and then we won't."

On edit: tangentially apropos of this topic: the latest visionary committment by the state EcoDevo commission for our fair city?

Support of up to $30 million in tax credits to build (along with a soccer stadium, a hotel and 1.7 million square feet of office space at an estimated cost of $949 million) an additional one million sf of retail space!!!

Yeah, that's just what we need - another million feet of empty retail space.

Fucking unbelievable.

[jpak]

3. Why address a problem that doesn't exist?

:shrug:

:evilgrin:

[pscot]

4. No scientific study is needed to figure that out.

All you need to do is look around at your own community. At an operational level, nobody is taking this seriously.