131 Years of Global Warming in 27 Seconds & the Fallacy of Adaptation

See the visualized data map here.  The public policy mantra on global warming has shifted in the last few years from mitigation, which is viewed as impractical, to adaptation, which is viewed as smart and practical.

If only! The problem with such a "positive, constructive, boosterism" framing of the challenge of catastrophic climate change is that full mitigation (full societal mobilization/innovation to stay below 1, 2 at most, degrees C average surface temperature warming), is our best and only shot at success. Even that success is uncertain.

All other scenarios are variations on permanent and fatal catastrophe. Adaptation in biology typically means species suicide as other species genetically modify or are already able to fit with the new environmental conditions. Human adaptation in an increasingly severe and hostile climate means a dramatic contraction in the number of humans that the human economy and larger environment (natural economy) can support. Greater variability of temperature and water regimes and the normalization of now extreme whether events will destroy natural and human-made capital resources and services faster than they will regenerate.

The implications for the contours of the future of the economic landscape are difficult to predict precisely. However, the severe effects of the scenarios up to the business as usual scenario (6 degrees C by end of the century) could easily mean the end of globalization as we know it; that is, the expansion of the globalizing industrial economy/society with it's intricately linked environmental destruction (think heating your living room with the last remaining fuel-wood from the upstairs bedrooms). With the accelerating effects of all warming scenarios above 1 degree, economies will become less productive, and likely more regionalized, with less trade between them as the harsh climate destroys human and natural economic resources and life support capacity. This shrinking economic capacity will lower and make more uncertain and variable the regional quality of life for surviving inhabitants. Human habitation of some regions may become insupportable and disappear entirely, possibly in all regions, as the increasingly harsh environment destroys human and natural capital and current period economic productive capacity.

This dire scenario is avoidable, but only if we act quickly and correctly. Of course humanity will need to defend (adapt) to some climate-warming-induced change even under the best case full mitigation 1 degree C rise scenario. The mistake in current public policy is thinking that adaptation is a partial substitute for the mitigation that we will not do. That is simply fatalism and false. There is a route to mitigation success. Fortunately it is fully embracing an accelerating a sustainability response. Such a response decouples economic activity (materials, processes, and consumption)  from destructive environmental impacts. This is accomplished through innovation that increases economic productivity while eliminating impact. Ultimately, it includes embedding the ecological-economic principles of nature into the heart of the human economy to leverage the 4+ billion years of evolutionary design experience creating living systems. Such a move would boost human economic productivity tremendously, thereby allowing us to support 100 percent of the planet at a regenerative standard of living even as the population increases from 6B to 9B by 2050, and while dramatically reducing and eliminating carbon emissions to achieve the 1C degree warming scenario.

We will end up with a more powerful prosperous economy and society regardless of why we pursue this path, so why not do it? What is there to lose? In the best case, we avoid species suicide and create a more prosperous, durable, secure economy and society for all. In the worst case, we simply create a more prosperous, durable, secure economy and society for all!