Really excellent article. I think we *should* pursue more support for the poor and more acceptance of migrants, both on their own ethical merits and as climate adaptation policies. I agree with your core point.
Referencing your Central America example in particular, as a maximalist policy I personally would strongly support offering US green cards to almost of the entire populations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, ideally phased over a ten-year period with a "lottery" mechanism and checks to exclude known violent criminals. This would of course be politically untenable in the United States at the moment, but it would be a great policy from climate adaptation, ethics, economics, and national strengths perspectives. (Cf. the abundant research on immigrants contributing to national economies, being more likely to start businesses, etc). We could definitely absorb them, especially with much more YIMBY housing laws (which I also support). Furthermore, even if we offered this, not *all* of the population of these Central American countries (less than 36 million for the three I mentioned at the moment, which is less than the current population of California alone) would come. Latvia and Lithuania have Schengen-zone open borders with much richer countries like France and Germany, but only around 20% of those populations chose to move. Remittances from the people who do choose to move would help those who stay invest in climate-adaptation measures from crop irrigation to stronger house foundations.
And what should we do with those migrants who carry Fentanyl and fire arms, contract sex workers with indentured servitude, or sell children to child molesters? I think your perspective is not well thought out.
You might also be interested in this article making a pro-immigration case with traditionally patriotic/conservative-style language. https://laneless.substack.com/p/more-america
This is a rather good quote on migrants. "Across the world, millions of the hardest working, most creative, most ingenious individuals have their eyes fixed on one destination: The United States of America. These are Americans-in-waiting, heroes who yearn to pursue the American dream, who share our values, who believe in freedom."
And we do the most immigration work in the world. That's *legal* immigration. The very people you speak of here. So, why do people immigrate illegally? Because they are criminals and they know they will be sent back. Minus the trafficked women and children. Because trafficking women and children is ..... illegal!! Damn, imagine the irony! LOL
People who commit violent crimes should be arrested and penalized. However, in America migrants are far less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens. Check out this study on crime rates in Texas:
"Without exception, undocumented immigrants have the lowest crime rates. Compared to native-born citizens, undocumented immigrants are roughly half as likely to be arrested for homicide, felonious assault, and sexual assault."
We don't know where the unclaimed are are while citizens actually register? And you don't think that skews your numbers? Interesting. Well, anyway, as long as they are committing fewer violent crimes, then let the good times roll! LOL
UPDATED with more references etc: I sense you fall into the binary yes/no adapt/stabilize trap because you're so pestered by those who, as you say, use "we'll adapt" as a get-out-of mitigation card.
But it is a dangerous trap to take their bait and, as a result, miss a crucial reality.
Cutting vulnerability to climate hazards has to be pursued as aggressively as cutting CO2.
Even an impossibly aggressive and global emission reduction would take decades to measurably show up in modulated losses from extreme weather events. Do you want marginalized communities who are deeply vulnerable in today's climate to wait for some marginal (and wishful) change in hurricane rainfall in 2060?
Exposure and vulnerability to climate hazards remain the dominant factors driving losses. (See LM Bouwer and others https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-72026-5_3 .). And, as the IPCC AR6 WG2 impacts/adaptation report notes, from now through 2040, " The level of risk will depend on concurrent near-term trends in vulnerability, exposure, level of socioeconomic development and adaptation": https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/#Risks Don't discount that path to reduced climate risk for the sake of battling those who are indeed abusing this issue.
Your vital point about cruel policies worsening climate effects for those at the margins (like prisoners) actually makes my point. These gaps have to be filled and those actively pursuing such policies have to be countered in the courts or ballot boxes. Climate vulnerability reduction can happen swiftly with wise investments and policies. More: https://revkin.substack.com/p/behind-global-climate-emergency-rhetoric-21-08-06
It’s hard to push two policies at the same time in our polarized policy world. But it’s vital if the goal is to foster an improved relationship with climate and energy for all humans.
You make good points about adaptation, but I stand by my point that those saying "we'll adapt" are not serious about adaptation. I'd be happy to see someone come up with a serious adaptation policy instead of denying water to construction workers.
I am not sure of your point. Your link to the IPCC Report clearly states: " Importantly climate resilient development prospects are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline, especially if 1.5°C global warming is exceeded in the near-term (high confidence). These prospects are constrained by past development, emissions and climate change, and enabled by inclusive governance, adequate and appropriate human and technological resources, information, capacities and finance (high confidence)."
The international IPCC committee is saying that if we don't do something drastic soon, then we will rapidly reach levels of climate collapse that will overwhelm attempts to adapt. Also, as the report states, it will require a miracle of governmental cooperation and competence that is clearly not evident today.
Your comment about migration brings up the looming crisis of overpopulation that is driving migration into deserts and floodplains out of desperation and poverty. You are describing the horror of mass ghettoization of humanity as a precursor to the eco-fascism Andrew mentions. Good luck on your pollyanna "wise investments and policies" miracle. Again, I see no evidence of this on any mass scale required to avoid the inevitable.
"The international IPCC committee is saying that if we don't do something drastic soon, then we will rapidly reach levels of climate collapse that will overwhelm attempts to adapt."
This is language similar to what I've seen from many activists, but I'm not aware of any scientific basis for it - in particular, I've seen no credible forecast for "climate collapse" in any scenario. Can you cite any place the IPCC has said this?
"Climate change also interacts with other anthropogenic stressors such as changes in land use, loss of biodiversity, nutrient imbalances, pollution and an overuse of available resources that are crossing the planetary safety boundary limits and operating as a possible catastrophic mix. This mix may exacerbate society vulnerabilities and cause multiple indirect stresses such as economic damage, loss of land and water, and food insecurity that can merge into system-wide synchronous failures. These cascading effects are not only biophysical or biogeochemical, but they also affect human society, generating conflicts, political instability, systemic financial risks, the spread of infectious diseases and the risk of spillover."
I have studied mitigation a lot more than adaptation. While I support the premise that we need to do both my problem is how to manage resources and how to prioritize between the two. I feel like we are just now making some headway on trade-offs between various options for mitigation, e.g. https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/?explorer=year&state=national&table=2020&limit=200 and for example the work of John Bistline, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32468-w / and https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/opinion/environment/ipcc-report-climate-change-debates.html. I just worry that we will dilute resources away from mitigation. How do you prioritize between mitigation and adaptation unless you really understand the impact of higher temperatures? Not to mention trying to also consider a just energy transition for developing countries. I may be old school but I still believe the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
"How do you prioritize between mitigation and adaptation unless you really understand the impact of higher temperatures?"
Isn't this the purpose of the IPCC reports? They include significant attention to the effects of higher temperatures. As I read them, the impacts are projected to be noticeable, but not catastrophic.
I particularly appreciate you bringing up the rise of eco-fascism which is a very real phenomena. Climate change is a very real existential threat and naturally humans will divide into in-groups and out-groups in competition for limited resources.
You pointed out the cruelty of making out-groups (poor, black/brown, non-Protestant) suffer the brunt of the consequences of climate change and it does not take much of a leap of imagination to see extermination camps as a "final solution" to dwindling habitable living space.
Normally I would think this hyperbole, but you listed many of the steps toward fascism witnessed in the past happening today. It is likely to really get ugly as fear increases and mass migrations rise.
What I don't get is how is reducing greenhouse emissions not adapting to climate change. In my book I stated the case flatly:
Countries most affected by climate extremes are not likely to quietly accept their fate while Americans sit it out (it should be noted that some of these countries are nuclear powers). While climate change itself does not have the power to end civilization, the humans affected by it certainly do.
Unstated but implied is widespread nuclear terrorism by those with nothing to lose and a burning desire to take as many of us with them as they can.
This line from Bill McKibbon's "The End of Nature," from 1989, seems apt:
"This is not to say that we should not act. We must act, and in every way possible, and immediately. We stand at the end of an era—the hundred years’ binge of oil, gas, and coal which has given us both the comforts and the predicament of the moment. Even those countries which wouldn’t object to a degree or two of warming for a longer growing season can’t endure endless heating. The choice of doing nothing—of continuing to burn ever more oil and gas and coal—is not a choice. It will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a comparable temperature. But even the scientists calling most vociferously for controls on emissions say they are doing so in order to slow down the warming so that we can adapt to it. That adaptation is all that remains to be discussed."
I would challenge the idea that the energy revolution will accomplish its goals. Simon Michaux argues in his 1,000-page report https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf that there are insufficient minerals to facilitate a 1:1 switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Therefore, although the first two stages of the revolution are underway, the third stage is unlikely to be completed. This is especially true if the energy transition aims to maintain the functionality of modern civilization while meeting growing energy demands.
Could you be more specific about who the ‘we’ll adapt’ group is? I agree with Andy Revkin that the binary seems artificial. Whether it be the IPCC concepts of climate resilient development (which argues for the imperative of addressing mitigation, adaptation, and poverty reduction/vulnerability reduction together) or city climate plans such as we have in Tucson that addresses mitigation and adaptation together or the extensive research literature on this I think most of those working on adaptation both researchers and practitioners would find your analysis does not fully reflect their work. Right now there are 1000+ adaptation researchers here in Montreal and I doubt any of them would see mitigation and adaptation as alternatives. We know we will not be able to stop or reverse emissions fast enough to avoid overshoot so we must invest in adaptation to peak temperature, especially reducing the impacts of vulnerability - including as you note the incarcerated, Central Americans, and disadvantaged communities. Interestingly the I R A environmental justice filters do start to do that.
I'm talking about people like The Breakthrough Institute (https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/06/climate-cop27-emissions-adaptation-development-energy-africa-developing-countries-global-south/): "Climate adaptation—the actions that societies take to protect their populations from extreme weather, such as storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and cold snaps—works. It includes all the things people in rich countries take for granted: well-constructed buildings that withstand disasters, dikes and dams that protect from floods, air conditioning and cold storage for food and medicines, early warning systems, well-equipped first responders, and evacuation routes along well-paved roads." Or someone like Steve Koonin.
This is part of a large-scale argument that we don't need to worry about climate change. That's the main point of the "we'll adapt" crowd and it's what I find problematic.
"Over most of human history (going back a few hundred thousand years), humans adapted to environmental change, by migrating"
This is the starting premise, but it's entirely unsupported. Certainly, there have been population migrations in the past, and some of them may have been related to climate change. A few examples I can think of:
Around the year 800, population of the Maya cities began to decline. This decline may have been related to climate change. But there's no evidence I'm aware of that the population migrated somewhere else.
The Medieval Warm Period may have contributed to population growth in Scandinavia, which may have driven the expansion of the Danes, Norse, and Swedes across Russia, England, Iceland, Ireland, France, and Italy. But these were conquerors, not refugees. They "migrated" because they conquered.
At some time between 600 and 1100 the flourishing city of Petra in what is now Jordan was abandoned. It's tempting to speculate that the abandonment was caused at least partly by climate change, but I'm not aware of any evidence to support this idea. Petra's decline certainly started by about 600, driven mainly by changes in trade routes.
There were waves of "barbarian migrations" that affected Europe, beginning with the Celts in the 6th century BC, leading up to the Mongols (actually mainly Tatars) in the 13th century. Again, it's tempting to speculate that these migrations were driven at least partly by climate change, but again I'm not aware of any evidence to support this idea. In the absence of evidence, it seems equally plausible that the migrations were driven by the ability of central Asia to support large warlike populations that were able to expand at the expense of their neighbors.
So, what exactly are the examples of people adapting to climate change, or any other problem, by migrating en masse?
It is certainly true that adaptation will be expensive - we will need better seawalls to protect coastal cities, better flood control to protect areas on flood plains, better and safer water supplies to support urban populations. Of course, we've needed some of these for decades in the US, but have generally avoided doing anything about them because our political process favors flashy new projects rather than boring infrastructure and maintenance. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, may do better, but they're faced with much more obvious and urgent challenges, like having a quarter of their land below sea level and another quarter in danger of flooding from ocean storms.
In the US, the real political obstacle to paying for adaptation is the same as the obstacle to paying for decarbonization - entitlements for an aging population are consuming the financial capabilities of the federal government, while pay and benefits for public employees are consuming the financial capabilities of most state and local governments. Other rich countries are in similar fixes, with many of the details different. A reckoning on this is inevitable at some point, even if climate change turns out to be no problem at all.
It is silly to claim that the only alternative to stopping climate change is for rich countries to pay for poor countries' adaptation. Most of future climate change will be driven by emissions from poor countries, but they need to use fossil fuels to build their economies to make them less poor. Once the poor countries are less poor, they'll be in a much better position to pay for their own adaptation.
Likewise, decarbonization in the rich countries will eat up resources that would better be used for adaptation. As Andrew says, adaptation is absolutely required. He doesn't make an argument that prevention via decarbonization would be less expensive or more effective than a purely adaptation approach.
Your examples all come from times when people were bound by law (=birth) to their local emperors. Migration was (and is) common in hunter-gatherer and nomadic populations, going back some tenthousand years, maybe much more, since sapiens lived on earth.
Another point: decarbonization of our economies costs (much) less than continuing fossil fuel extraction and burning. Just look at the mining volumes needed to uphold our fossil energy system vs. the transition to a solar energy system: it is somewhere around 500 : 1 (!). For details see Hannah Ritchie (sustainabilitybynumbers.com) and world mining statistics.
You think that people were prevented by law from relocating during medieval times? Could you explain that a bit? Obviously, there were serfs at some times and places, but if "populations" needed to migrate, presumably the lords would have migrated with their retainers.
You say migration was and is common among hunter-gatherers and nomadic populations, but this is true by definition - hunter-gatherers migrate to where the food is, usually on seasonal patterns, and nomads are nomadic. But, what population has moved from one area to another because the older area was uninhabitable?
You claim that decarbonization is much less expensive than continuing use of fossil fuels. If this is so, why do all advocates of decarbonization say that subsidies are required to make renewables viable?
By the way, your link seems to be no longer active. A quick check of the wayback machine doesn't show anything supporting your claim.
> You claim that decarbonization is much less expensive than continuing use of fossil fuels. If this is so, why do all advocates of decarbonization say that subsidies are required to make renewables viable?
Exactly. All the recent news about canceled offshore wind projects (US) and auctions (UK) because of higher interest rates and inflation should give pause to anyone claiming renewables are cheaper than other electricity sources in all contexts.
Just yesterday, the IMF warned about the “huge costs” of net zero (Bloomberg’s Javier Blas own words). Let’s drop the fantasy that net zero will be affordable.
Thank you for frequently making common sense comments on climate change and net zero, Brian.
it's not me claiming that a transition won't be that expensive, it's lots of studies (McKinsey, Net Zero America, Berkeley 2035, NREL). it's especially true if you factor in the costs of fossil fuels that are not paid for by the consumer, e.g., climate change, air pollution, geopolitical instability, erosion of democracy in the U.S.
Andrew, do you read the reports you cite? The Net Zero America report does not really show that decarbonization is not expensive. Page 6 of the summary report (available at https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report) says that a net zero energy system will require at least $2.5 trillion of capital investment over the next 10 years, plus $7.5 trillion more by 2050, above a "business as usual" practice. Once that is done, we'll still spend as much for energy as we're currently spending. To borrow a metaphor, this is like saying that housing is inexpensive, once you've built and paid for the house.
Page 18 of the full report (available at the same site) emphasizes that a key assumption is that "Historically-low inflation rate and cost of capital observed in the past decade (i.e., since the 2008-09 financial crisis) persist to 2050. We are already seeing higher inflation and costs of capital - not high by historical standards, but much higher than we saw from 2009 to 2022. As far as I can tell, they perform no sensitivity analysis to examine the consequences of higher inflation and/or cost of capital. They do note that all their net zero pathways are very capital intensive, so the impact of higher cost of capital should be very significant.
Page 10 of the summary also notes that all pathways rely on large-scale (billions of tons per year) CO2 capture and utilization or storage, but cost of this capture and storage isn't addressed.
Similarly, the Berkeley report (available at https://www.2035report.com/electricity/) claims that "wholesale energy costs specifically [will be] lower in 2035 [than now]. This is what you might call "weasel words" - wholesale prices will be lower if they're subsidized enough. The analysis relies on continuing and expanding federal subsidies for renewable energy (most clearly spelled out in the Policy Guide for Congress:
• Extend existing tax credits for all zero-carbon electricity sources and make energy storage projects eligible. Convert current tax credits into cash grants and refundable tax credits.
• Reinstate the manufacturing tax credit offered in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies.
• Greatly increase DOE’s capacity to provide low-cost capital to companies with proven experience willing to expand manufacturing capacity of wind, solar, and grid-scale storage.
• Offer utilities federal debt financing on unpaid fossil capital costs, where compliance with clean energy standards accelerates coal and gas power plant closures.
Additionally, the Berkeley study relies on large-scale carbon capture and sequestration, and assumes that technical solutions will be developed, but does not consider the cost of sequestration.
In other words, renewables and net zero are cheap if we assume (a) low cost inflation, (b) low interest rates, (c) high subsidies, and (d) free carbon capture.
As Brian points out, these studies make heroic assumptions (low inflation, low interest rates, high subsidies, discovery of new technologies), and some don’t even claim the transition won’t be that expensive.
In the meantime, today, offshore wind projects get postponed, renegotiated, or outright canceled because those assumptions aren’t met. All 3 major western wind turbine makers have increased turbine prices since they bottomed in 2020 and yet have negative operating margins, i.e. increased offshore wind costs aren’t due to corporations being greedy.
So... after they've managed to kill all the PoC, LGBTQ (and others they hate), who will raise their children, clean their houses, mow their lawns, do their hair, fix their cars and planes (and everything else that needs fixing)? Not the rich white nationalists (who seem only capable of being bullies and assholes). Not the hedge fund managers, or legacy billionaires.
It's fine to have a lot of money, but not if there's no one to hire, and nothing left to buy, like food.
Humans may well adapt, but only perhaps what, 1 or 2% of the world population will actually survive? And that might be optimistic.
Maybe this is a good time for Elon to head to Mars, and take every last one of his followers with him. (Including the Orange Rump, Putin, Xi, about a dozen members of congress, all the maga-heads), et al).Then perhaps we can start doing what's good for humanity, and helpful to our planet.
I need to preface this by saying, I normally love the content you write and have been reading all your articles with deep and keen interest.
With this one, though, you have crossed a line. It suggests (perhaps betrays) how safe you feel, and how distant climate chaos is to your lived experience.
So deep is my fury with your post today I've had to calm down before I could even begin this reply. Angry as it is, this is my sanitised version.
You presume that the things you speak of are still hypothetical, or at worst are being experienced by the maginalized poor, or global south.
That is bad enough, but HOW . WRONG . YOU . ARE.
The escalation of climate driven events in the last four to five years are threatening rural communities ACROSS THE WORLD. North. South. East. West. Climate change has already muscled into many people's day to day lives and it does not play nice. Just because the world still feels calm where you are, does not mean that is the lived experience of others.
Facing a firestorm, or a catastrophic flood, or an unsurvivable (wet bulb) heat dome once in your lifetime used to be damned unlucky. Facing the reality it will happen once every 5 to 10 years, or more is enough to push people over the edge. The knowledge that any one of those events may wipe you out -- if they haven't already -- is soul-shatteringly hard. People in my community have suicided over the fact we know we'll have another catastrophic wildfire within the next 5 years (the last one was only 3 years ago. 89 homes were lost). They simply couldn't face the threat and the unbelievably hard recovery journey.
The urgent need to adapt to climate chaos is absolutely real, right now. And the adaptation need is way more significant than air conditioning and extra water access to make people comfortable. I I'm talking about adaptation that means the difference between life and death. Or losing your entire community.
That governments everywhere are paying little heed to genuine community-level adaptation, is literally threatening the food production and rural industries of human society. Tracks of nature and wilderness are being hammered. Biodiversity lost. And because the 'anti-adapters' are shrill in their fight -- so focused in the belief that anyone who mentions the word 'adaptation' must come from the dismissive 'we'll adapt' crowd and should be silenced -- demanding that mitigation can be the only focus, governments (yours and mine and many other powerful players) are putting f*** all of nothing into adapting to the excalating, life threatening, catastrophic events unfolding before us right now. Yes, migration will be one solution. Another is to let a whole bunch of us die.
Stabilising the climate is vital. Absolutly. I agree. But so is adapting to the clusterf*** we've already unleashed.
Your words have power, Andrew. You hold a commentry position with serious influence, by consistently providing credible, factual information. And, from that previledged position, you've just told a whole swag of people that the survival of my community, and our desperate need to adapt to the rapidly escalating wildfire events we now face, is second fiddle to waiting until net-zero is reached in some future utopia.
Sorry to hear about your plight, but this is unjustified. The article is not anti adaptation, it's against people who say we'll adapt as an excuse for not mitigating, when they have no intention of adapting/paying for adaptation either.
Yes, Margi, I hear you. As Robert says, my post is not anti-adaptation, it's anti "adaptation" as an excuse to do nothing (the "we'll adapt" crowd). We definitely do need effective adaptation, as I say in the last paragraph, which the "we'll adapt" crowd does not actually support, as well as a strong effort to reduce emissions.
I disagree with you both. That might be what you intended to write, Andrew, but your words will land differently in people, depending on thier context. You've essentially madel adapation synonymous with they we'll adapt crowd. Read a few quotes from your text with fresh eyes.
"I think you’ll find that the very voices championing adaptation are among the most likely to also oppose immigration"
"Adaptation also gives politicians opportunities for extortion. Politico reports that critical flood adaptation funding has been held up because of New Orleans’ stance on abortion. "
"While some level of adaptation is absolutely required — climate change is, unfortunately, here to stay — the notion that it should be our front-line response is flawed at its core. Relying on adaptation as a primary strategy is a recipe for widespread misery and conflict."
"The good news is that we know how to solve this problem by stabilizing the climate."
Yes there are a lot of bad faith or at least confused claims about adaption. Let's try to un-confuse.
1. Adaption is not an alternative to taking least-cost measures to reduce and eventually reverse net emission of CO2 into the atmosphere.
2. Adaption means policies and investments to reduce the harm of CO2 that has already been and will be emitted until we reach net zero. Reducing emissions reduces the cost of adaptation.
3. Yes, it is fair for countries that have emitted lots ofCO2 in the past to bear some of the cost of adaption in countries that have emitted less.
4. Revenue from the same tax on net emissions that reduces emissions can also finance adaption.
On the bright side, if we do end up in a Waterworld/Postman post-apocalyptic world, people with think tank skills will likely be the first to be eaten.
I agree with nearly all of this, but, while I'm not from Texas, I think the assertion that racism or a desire to be cruel are why some legislators are opposed to AC in prisons or mandatory water breaks for construction workers is unfair. There was a time when I would have held those opinions, and the reasons would have been, for the first, a combination of being frugal and seeing air conditioning as a privilege, and for the second, an opposition to red tape laws because of a perception that they cost money and slow construction, and a belief that making such a thing mandatory is entirely unnecessary.
Now, as I said, I'm not from Texas, and I have heard of their notorious racism, so maybe racism plays a bigger role there. At the same time, I believe in not making such accusations except where there's certainty, because if it's not true, not only have you wronged those you accused, but also alienated them, hurting your cause; and even if it is true, they can pretend it's not, and many onlookers who give them the benefit of the doubt will see you as unfairly attacking them, which will also hurt your cause. In today's world, they will call you woke, and dismiss everything you say. In general, since racism is unnecessary to take that position, I think it's neither right nor wise to assert that it's playing a role, unless it can be proved.
But to add something to your points, it's amazing that small-government conservatives could believe that governments could effectively handle adaptation, and support such a thing. It seems to me that governments would undoubtedly move too slow often. Or, if they wanted to avoid doing that, they would have to try to preempt changes, and sometimes there would be Type 1 errors. Even when they predict things correctly, the things adaptation would demand mean that most of the time- maybe all of the time- it would end up being much more costly than expected. Red tape, construction delays, permitting problems, environmental impact reports, political fights, etc. And there would be failiures constantly. I can't at all envision adaptation being a thing that happens smoothly.
Really excellent article. I think we *should* pursue more support for the poor and more acceptance of migrants, both on their own ethical merits and as climate adaptation policies. I agree with your core point.
Referencing your Central America example in particular, as a maximalist policy I personally would strongly support offering US green cards to almost of the entire populations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, ideally phased over a ten-year period with a "lottery" mechanism and checks to exclude known violent criminals. This would of course be politically untenable in the United States at the moment, but it would be a great policy from climate adaptation, ethics, economics, and national strengths perspectives. (Cf. the abundant research on immigrants contributing to national economies, being more likely to start businesses, etc). We could definitely absorb them, especially with much more YIMBY housing laws (which I also support). Furthermore, even if we offered this, not *all* of the population of these Central American countries (less than 36 million for the three I mentioned at the moment, which is less than the current population of California alone) would come. Latvia and Lithuania have Schengen-zone open borders with much richer countries like France and Germany, but only around 20% of those populations chose to move. Remittances from the people who do choose to move would help those who stay invest in climate-adaptation measures from crop irrigation to stronger house foundations.
And what should we do with those migrants who carry Fentanyl and fire arms, contract sex workers with indentured servitude, or sell children to child molesters? I think your perspective is not well thought out.
You might also be interested in this article making a pro-immigration case with traditionally patriotic/conservative-style language. https://laneless.substack.com/p/more-america
This is a rather good quote on migrants. "Across the world, millions of the hardest working, most creative, most ingenious individuals have their eyes fixed on one destination: The United States of America. These are Americans-in-waiting, heroes who yearn to pursue the American dream, who share our values, who believe in freedom."
And we do the most immigration work in the world. That's *legal* immigration. The very people you speak of here. So, why do people immigrate illegally? Because they are criminals and they know they will be sent back. Minus the trafficked women and children. Because trafficking women and children is ..... illegal!! Damn, imagine the irony! LOL
People who commit violent crimes should be arrested and penalized. However, in America migrants are far less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens. Check out this study on crime rates in Texas:
"Without exception, undocumented immigrants have the lowest crime rates. Compared to native-born citizens, undocumented immigrants are roughly half as likely to be arrested for homicide, felonious assault, and sexual assault."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014704117
That's the reality.
We don't know where the unclaimed are are while citizens actually register? And you don't think that skews your numbers? Interesting. Well, anyway, as long as they are committing fewer violent crimes, then let the good times roll! LOL
A powerful and haunting piece. Thank you for spelling it out so plainly.
UPDATED with more references etc: I sense you fall into the binary yes/no adapt/stabilize trap because you're so pestered by those who, as you say, use "we'll adapt" as a get-out-of mitigation card.
But it is a dangerous trap to take their bait and, as a result, miss a crucial reality.
Cutting vulnerability to climate hazards has to be pursued as aggressively as cutting CO2.
Even an impossibly aggressive and global emission reduction would take decades to measurably show up in modulated losses from extreme weather events. Do you want marginalized communities who are deeply vulnerable in today's climate to wait for some marginal (and wishful) change in hurricane rainfall in 2060?
Exposure and vulnerability to climate hazards remain the dominant factors driving losses. (See LM Bouwer and others https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-72026-5_3 .). And, as the IPCC AR6 WG2 impacts/adaptation report notes, from now through 2040, " The level of risk will depend on concurrent near-term trends in vulnerability, exposure, level of socioeconomic development and adaptation": https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/#Risks Don't discount that path to reduced climate risk for the sake of battling those who are indeed abusing this issue.
Your point about migration is not in line with the IPCC and other work. In fact, globally, people are moving into flood zones faster than climate change is changing those flood zones. See Tellman et al (and more): https://revkin.substack.com/p/study-finds-global-surge-of-flood-21-08-04
Your vital point about cruel policies worsening climate effects for those at the margins (like prisoners) actually makes my point. These gaps have to be filled and those actively pursuing such policies have to be countered in the courts or ballot boxes. Climate vulnerability reduction can happen swiftly with wise investments and policies. More: https://revkin.substack.com/p/behind-global-climate-emergency-rhetoric-21-08-06
It’s hard to push two policies at the same time in our polarized policy world. But it’s vital if the goal is to foster an improved relationship with climate and energy for all humans.
Let me know what you think.
You make good points about adaptation, but I stand by my point that those saying "we'll adapt" are not serious about adaptation. I'd be happy to see someone come up with a serious adaptation policy instead of denying water to construction workers.
I see your point, but we have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
This is the kind of robust discussion that I’ve come to appreciate on this platform. Thank you Andy and Andrew.
I am not sure of your point. Your link to the IPCC Report clearly states: " Importantly climate resilient development prospects are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline, especially if 1.5°C global warming is exceeded in the near-term (high confidence). These prospects are constrained by past development, emissions and climate change, and enabled by inclusive governance, adequate and appropriate human and technological resources, information, capacities and finance (high confidence)."
The international IPCC committee is saying that if we don't do something drastic soon, then we will rapidly reach levels of climate collapse that will overwhelm attempts to adapt. Also, as the report states, it will require a miracle of governmental cooperation and competence that is clearly not evident today.
Your comment about migration brings up the looming crisis of overpopulation that is driving migration into deserts and floodplains out of desperation and poverty. You are describing the horror of mass ghettoization of humanity as a precursor to the eco-fascism Andrew mentions. Good luck on your pollyanna "wise investments and policies" miracle. Again, I see no evidence of this on any mass scale required to avoid the inevitable.
"The international IPCC committee is saying that if we don't do something drastic soon, then we will rapidly reach levels of climate collapse that will overwhelm attempts to adapt."
This is language similar to what I've seen from many activists, but I'm not aware of any scientific basis for it - in particular, I've seen no credible forecast for "climate collapse" in any scenario. Can you cite any place the IPCC has said this?
"Climate change also interacts with other anthropogenic stressors such as changes in land use, loss of biodiversity, nutrient imbalances, pollution and an overuse of available resources that are crossing the planetary safety boundary limits and operating as a possible catastrophic mix. This mix may exacerbate society vulnerabilities and cause multiple indirect stresses such as economic damage, loss of land and water, and food insecurity that can merge into system-wide synchronous failures. These cascading effects are not only biophysical or biogeochemical, but they also affect human society, generating conflicts, political instability, systemic financial risks, the spread of infectious diseases and the risk of spillover."
https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/10/6/nwad082/7085016
Thank you Andy @Revkin for weighing in. I've just said the same but with less diplomacy, below.
I have studied mitigation a lot more than adaptation. While I support the premise that we need to do both my problem is how to manage resources and how to prioritize between the two. I feel like we are just now making some headway on trade-offs between various options for mitigation, e.g. https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/?explorer=year&state=national&table=2020&limit=200 and for example the work of John Bistline, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32468-w / and https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/opinion/environment/ipcc-report-climate-change-debates.html. I just worry that we will dilute resources away from mitigation. How do you prioritize between mitigation and adaptation unless you really understand the impact of higher temperatures? Not to mention trying to also consider a just energy transition for developing countries. I may be old school but I still believe the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
"How do you prioritize between mitigation and adaptation unless you really understand the impact of higher temperatures?"
Isn't this the purpose of the IPCC reports? They include significant attention to the effects of higher temperatures. As I read them, the impacts are projected to be noticeable, but not catastrophic.
I particularly appreciate you bringing up the rise of eco-fascism which is a very real phenomena. Climate change is a very real existential threat and naturally humans will divide into in-groups and out-groups in competition for limited resources.
You pointed out the cruelty of making out-groups (poor, black/brown, non-Protestant) suffer the brunt of the consequences of climate change and it does not take much of a leap of imagination to see extermination camps as a "final solution" to dwindling habitable living space.
Normally I would think this hyperbole, but you listed many of the steps toward fascism witnessed in the past happening today. It is likely to really get ugly as fear increases and mass migrations rise.
It's ugly now, John. See my comment below.
What I don't get is how is reducing greenhouse emissions not adapting to climate change. In my book I stated the case flatly:
Countries most affected by climate extremes are not likely to quietly accept their fate while Americans sit it out (it should be noted that some of these countries are nuclear powers). While climate change itself does not have the power to end civilization, the humans affected by it certainly do.
Unstated but implied is widespread nuclear terrorism by those with nothing to lose and a burning desire to take as many of us with them as they can.
This line from Bill McKibbon's "The End of Nature," from 1989, seems apt:
"This is not to say that we should not act. We must act, and in every way possible, and immediately. We stand at the end of an era—the hundred years’ binge of oil, gas, and coal which has given us both the comforts and the predicament of the moment. Even those countries which wouldn’t object to a degree or two of warming for a longer growing season can’t endure endless heating. The choice of doing nothing—of continuing to burn ever more oil and gas and coal—is not a choice. It will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a comparable temperature. But even the scientists calling most vociferously for controls on emissions say they are doing so in order to slow down the warming so that we can adapt to it. That adaptation is all that remains to be discussed."
As always, excellent particle.
I would challenge the idea that the energy revolution will accomplish its goals. Simon Michaux argues in his 1,000-page report https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf that there are insufficient minerals to facilitate a 1:1 switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Therefore, although the first two stages of the revolution are underway, the third stage is unlikely to be completed. This is especially true if the energy transition aims to maintain the functionality of modern civilization while meeting growing energy demands.
Could you be more specific about who the ‘we’ll adapt’ group is? I agree with Andy Revkin that the binary seems artificial. Whether it be the IPCC concepts of climate resilient development (which argues for the imperative of addressing mitigation, adaptation, and poverty reduction/vulnerability reduction together) or city climate plans such as we have in Tucson that addresses mitigation and adaptation together or the extensive research literature on this I think most of those working on adaptation both researchers and practitioners would find your analysis does not fully reflect their work. Right now there are 1000+ adaptation researchers here in Montreal and I doubt any of them would see mitigation and adaptation as alternatives. We know we will not be able to stop or reverse emissions fast enough to avoid overshoot so we must invest in adaptation to peak temperature, especially reducing the impacts of vulnerability - including as you note the incarcerated, Central Americans, and disadvantaged communities. Interestingly the I R A environmental justice filters do start to do that.
I'm talking about people like The Breakthrough Institute (https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/06/climate-cop27-emissions-adaptation-development-energy-africa-developing-countries-global-south/): "Climate adaptation—the actions that societies take to protect their populations from extreme weather, such as storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and cold snaps—works. It includes all the things people in rich countries take for granted: well-constructed buildings that withstand disasters, dikes and dams that protect from floods, air conditioning and cold storage for food and medicines, early warning systems, well-equipped first responders, and evacuation routes along well-paved roads." Or someone like Steve Koonin.
Thanks. But why is that quote problematic? Did they actually say we should only adapt and not mitigate?
This is part of a large-scale argument that we don't need to worry about climate change. That's the main point of the "we'll adapt" crowd and it's what I find problematic.
"Over most of human history (going back a few hundred thousand years), humans adapted to environmental change, by migrating"
This is the starting premise, but it's entirely unsupported. Certainly, there have been population migrations in the past, and some of them may have been related to climate change. A few examples I can think of:
Around the year 800, population of the Maya cities began to decline. This decline may have been related to climate change. But there's no evidence I'm aware of that the population migrated somewhere else.
The Medieval Warm Period may have contributed to population growth in Scandinavia, which may have driven the expansion of the Danes, Norse, and Swedes across Russia, England, Iceland, Ireland, France, and Italy. But these were conquerors, not refugees. They "migrated" because they conquered.
At some time between 600 and 1100 the flourishing city of Petra in what is now Jordan was abandoned. It's tempting to speculate that the abandonment was caused at least partly by climate change, but I'm not aware of any evidence to support this idea. Petra's decline certainly started by about 600, driven mainly by changes in trade routes.
There were waves of "barbarian migrations" that affected Europe, beginning with the Celts in the 6th century BC, leading up to the Mongols (actually mainly Tatars) in the 13th century. Again, it's tempting to speculate that these migrations were driven at least partly by climate change, but again I'm not aware of any evidence to support this idea. In the absence of evidence, it seems equally plausible that the migrations were driven by the ability of central Asia to support large warlike populations that were able to expand at the expense of their neighbors.
So, what exactly are the examples of people adapting to climate change, or any other problem, by migrating en masse?
It is certainly true that adaptation will be expensive - we will need better seawalls to protect coastal cities, better flood control to protect areas on flood plains, better and safer water supplies to support urban populations. Of course, we've needed some of these for decades in the US, but have generally avoided doing anything about them because our political process favors flashy new projects rather than boring infrastructure and maintenance. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, may do better, but they're faced with much more obvious and urgent challenges, like having a quarter of their land below sea level and another quarter in danger of flooding from ocean storms.
In the US, the real political obstacle to paying for adaptation is the same as the obstacle to paying for decarbonization - entitlements for an aging population are consuming the financial capabilities of the federal government, while pay and benefits for public employees are consuming the financial capabilities of most state and local governments. Other rich countries are in similar fixes, with many of the details different. A reckoning on this is inevitable at some point, even if climate change turns out to be no problem at all.
It is silly to claim that the only alternative to stopping climate change is for rich countries to pay for poor countries' adaptation. Most of future climate change will be driven by emissions from poor countries, but they need to use fossil fuels to build their economies to make them less poor. Once the poor countries are less poor, they'll be in a much better position to pay for their own adaptation.
Likewise, decarbonization in the rich countries will eat up resources that would better be used for adaptation. As Andrew says, adaptation is absolutely required. He doesn't make an argument that prevention via decarbonization would be less expensive or more effective than a purely adaptation approach.
Your examples all come from times when people were bound by law (=birth) to their local emperors. Migration was (and is) common in hunter-gatherer and nomadic populations, going back some tenthousand years, maybe much more, since sapiens lived on earth.
Another point: decarbonization of our economies costs (much) less than continuing fossil fuel extraction and burning. Just look at the mining volumes needed to uphold our fossil energy system vs. the transition to a solar energy system: it is somewhere around 500 : 1 (!). For details see Hannah Ritchie (sustainabilitybynumbers.com) and world mining statistics.
You think that people were prevented by law from relocating during medieval times? Could you explain that a bit? Obviously, there were serfs at some times and places, but if "populations" needed to migrate, presumably the lords would have migrated with their retainers.
You say migration was and is common among hunter-gatherers and nomadic populations, but this is true by definition - hunter-gatherers migrate to where the food is, usually on seasonal patterns, and nomads are nomadic. But, what population has moved from one area to another because the older area was uninhabitable?
You claim that decarbonization is much less expensive than continuing use of fossil fuels. If this is so, why do all advocates of decarbonization say that subsidies are required to make renewables viable?
By the way, your link seems to be no longer active. A quick check of the wayback machine doesn't show anything supporting your claim.
> You claim that decarbonization is much less expensive than continuing use of fossil fuels. If this is so, why do all advocates of decarbonization say that subsidies are required to make renewables viable?
Exactly. All the recent news about canceled offshore wind projects (US) and auctions (UK) because of higher interest rates and inflation should give pause to anyone claiming renewables are cheaper than other electricity sources in all contexts.
Just yesterday, the IMF warned about the “huge costs” of net zero (Bloomberg’s Javier Blas own words). Let’s drop the fantasy that net zero will be affordable.
Thank you for frequently making common sense comments on climate change and net zero, Brian.
http://twitter.com/JavierBlas/statuses/1708956745857401064
it's not me claiming that a transition won't be that expensive, it's lots of studies (McKinsey, Net Zero America, Berkeley 2035, NREL). it's especially true if you factor in the costs of fossil fuels that are not paid for by the consumer, e.g., climate change, air pollution, geopolitical instability, erosion of democracy in the U.S.
Andrew, do you read the reports you cite? The Net Zero America report does not really show that decarbonization is not expensive. Page 6 of the summary report (available at https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report) says that a net zero energy system will require at least $2.5 trillion of capital investment over the next 10 years, plus $7.5 trillion more by 2050, above a "business as usual" practice. Once that is done, we'll still spend as much for energy as we're currently spending. To borrow a metaphor, this is like saying that housing is inexpensive, once you've built and paid for the house.
Page 18 of the full report (available at the same site) emphasizes that a key assumption is that "Historically-low inflation rate and cost of capital observed in the past decade (i.e., since the 2008-09 financial crisis) persist to 2050. We are already seeing higher inflation and costs of capital - not high by historical standards, but much higher than we saw from 2009 to 2022. As far as I can tell, they perform no sensitivity analysis to examine the consequences of higher inflation and/or cost of capital. They do note that all their net zero pathways are very capital intensive, so the impact of higher cost of capital should be very significant.
Page 10 of the summary also notes that all pathways rely on large-scale (billions of tons per year) CO2 capture and utilization or storage, but cost of this capture and storage isn't addressed.
Similarly, the Berkeley report (available at https://www.2035report.com/electricity/) claims that "wholesale energy costs specifically [will be] lower in 2035 [than now]. This is what you might call "weasel words" - wholesale prices will be lower if they're subsidized enough. The analysis relies on continuing and expanding federal subsidies for renewable energy (most clearly spelled out in the Policy Guide for Congress:
• Extend existing tax credits for all zero-carbon electricity sources and make energy storage projects eligible. Convert current tax credits into cash grants and refundable tax credits.
• Reinstate the manufacturing tax credit offered in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies.
• Greatly increase DOE’s capacity to provide low-cost capital to companies with proven experience willing to expand manufacturing capacity of wind, solar, and grid-scale storage.
• Offer utilities federal debt financing on unpaid fossil capital costs, where compliance with clean energy standards accelerates coal and gas power plant closures.
Additionally, the Berkeley study relies on large-scale carbon capture and sequestration, and assumes that technical solutions will be developed, but does not consider the cost of sequestration.
In other words, renewables and net zero are cheap if we assume (a) low cost inflation, (b) low interest rates, (c) high subsidies, and (d) free carbon capture.
As Brian points out, these studies make heroic assumptions (low inflation, low interest rates, high subsidies, discovery of new technologies), and some don’t even claim the transition won’t be that expensive.
In the meantime, today, offshore wind projects get postponed, renegotiated, or outright canceled because those assumptions aren’t met. All 3 major western wind turbine makers have increased turbine prices since they bottomed in 2020 and yet have negative operating margins, i.e. increased offshore wind costs aren’t due to corporations being greedy.
As an example of the large subsidies that are needed to make wholesale electricity prices palatable: https://substack.com/@julienjomaux/note/c-41231676
So... after they've managed to kill all the PoC, LGBTQ (and others they hate), who will raise their children, clean their houses, mow their lawns, do their hair, fix their cars and planes (and everything else that needs fixing)? Not the rich white nationalists (who seem only capable of being bullies and assholes). Not the hedge fund managers, or legacy billionaires.
It's fine to have a lot of money, but not if there's no one to hire, and nothing left to buy, like food.
Humans may well adapt, but only perhaps what, 1 or 2% of the world population will actually survive? And that might be optimistic.
Maybe this is a good time for Elon to head to Mars, and take every last one of his followers with him. (Including the Orange Rump, Putin, Xi, about a dozen members of congress, all the maga-heads), et al).Then perhaps we can start doing what's good for humanity, and helpful to our planet.
I need to preface this by saying, I normally love the content you write and have been reading all your articles with deep and keen interest.
With this one, though, you have crossed a line. It suggests (perhaps betrays) how safe you feel, and how distant climate chaos is to your lived experience.
So deep is my fury with your post today I've had to calm down before I could even begin this reply. Angry as it is, this is my sanitised version.
You presume that the things you speak of are still hypothetical, or at worst are being experienced by the maginalized poor, or global south.
That is bad enough, but HOW . WRONG . YOU . ARE.
The escalation of climate driven events in the last four to five years are threatening rural communities ACROSS THE WORLD. North. South. East. West. Climate change has already muscled into many people's day to day lives and it does not play nice. Just because the world still feels calm where you are, does not mean that is the lived experience of others.
Facing a firestorm, or a catastrophic flood, or an unsurvivable (wet bulb) heat dome once in your lifetime used to be damned unlucky. Facing the reality it will happen once every 5 to 10 years, or more is enough to push people over the edge. The knowledge that any one of those events may wipe you out -- if they haven't already -- is soul-shatteringly hard. People in my community have suicided over the fact we know we'll have another catastrophic wildfire within the next 5 years (the last one was only 3 years ago. 89 homes were lost). They simply couldn't face the threat and the unbelievably hard recovery journey.
The urgent need to adapt to climate chaos is absolutely real, right now. And the adaptation need is way more significant than air conditioning and extra water access to make people comfortable. I I'm talking about adaptation that means the difference between life and death. Or losing your entire community.
That governments everywhere are paying little heed to genuine community-level adaptation, is literally threatening the food production and rural industries of human society. Tracks of nature and wilderness are being hammered. Biodiversity lost. And because the 'anti-adapters' are shrill in their fight -- so focused in the belief that anyone who mentions the word 'adaptation' must come from the dismissive 'we'll adapt' crowd and should be silenced -- demanding that mitigation can be the only focus, governments (yours and mine and many other powerful players) are putting f*** all of nothing into adapting to the excalating, life threatening, catastrophic events unfolding before us right now. Yes, migration will be one solution. Another is to let a whole bunch of us die.
Stabilising the climate is vital. Absolutly. I agree. But so is adapting to the clusterf*** we've already unleashed.
Your words have power, Andrew. You hold a commentry position with serious influence, by consistently providing credible, factual information. And, from that previledged position, you've just told a whole swag of people that the survival of my community, and our desperate need to adapt to the rapidly escalating wildfire events we now face, is second fiddle to waiting until net-zero is reached in some future utopia.
Pause and imagine what that actually means.
Sorry to hear about your plight, but this is unjustified. The article is not anti adaptation, it's against people who say we'll adapt as an excuse for not mitigating, when they have no intention of adapting/paying for adaptation either.
Yes, Margi, I hear you. As Robert says, my post is not anti-adaptation, it's anti "adaptation" as an excuse to do nothing (the "we'll adapt" crowd). We definitely do need effective adaptation, as I say in the last paragraph, which the "we'll adapt" crowd does not actually support, as well as a strong effort to reduce emissions.
I disagree with you both. That might be what you intended to write, Andrew, but your words will land differently in people, depending on thier context. You've essentially madel adapation synonymous with they we'll adapt crowd. Read a few quotes from your text with fresh eyes.
"I think you’ll find that the very voices championing adaptation are among the most likely to also oppose immigration"
"Adaptation also gives politicians opportunities for extortion. Politico reports that critical flood adaptation funding has been held up because of New Orleans’ stance on abortion. "
"While some level of adaptation is absolutely required — climate change is, unfortunately, here to stay — the notion that it should be our front-line response is flawed at its core. Relying on adaptation as a primary strategy is a recipe for widespread misery and conflict."
"The good news is that we know how to solve this problem by stabilizing the climate."
Yes there are a lot of bad faith or at least confused claims about adaption. Let's try to un-confuse.
1. Adaption is not an alternative to taking least-cost measures to reduce and eventually reverse net emission of CO2 into the atmosphere.
2. Adaption means policies and investments to reduce the harm of CO2 that has already been and will be emitted until we reach net zero. Reducing emissions reduces the cost of adaptation.
3. Yes, it is fair for countries that have emitted lots ofCO2 in the past to bear some of the cost of adaption in countries that have emitted less.
4. Revenue from the same tax on net emissions that reduces emissions can also finance adaption.
On the bright side, if we do end up in a Waterworld/Postman post-apocalyptic world, people with think tank skills will likely be the first to be eaten.
If people understood the realities of wet bulb temperature, they might realize the limitations of human adaptation.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/wet-bulb-temperature-explained
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/stunning-wet-bulb-temperature-update
We could also talk about supply chain breakdown and agricultural collapse.
I agree with nearly all of this, but, while I'm not from Texas, I think the assertion that racism or a desire to be cruel are why some legislators are opposed to AC in prisons or mandatory water breaks for construction workers is unfair. There was a time when I would have held those opinions, and the reasons would have been, for the first, a combination of being frugal and seeing air conditioning as a privilege, and for the second, an opposition to red tape laws because of a perception that they cost money and slow construction, and a belief that making such a thing mandatory is entirely unnecessary.
Now, as I said, I'm not from Texas, and I have heard of their notorious racism, so maybe racism plays a bigger role there. At the same time, I believe in not making such accusations except where there's certainty, because if it's not true, not only have you wronged those you accused, but also alienated them, hurting your cause; and even if it is true, they can pretend it's not, and many onlookers who give them the benefit of the doubt will see you as unfairly attacking them, which will also hurt your cause. In today's world, they will call you woke, and dismiss everything you say. In general, since racism is unnecessary to take that position, I think it's neither right nor wise to assert that it's playing a role, unless it can be proved.
But to add something to your points, it's amazing that small-government conservatives could believe that governments could effectively handle adaptation, and support such a thing. It seems to me that governments would undoubtedly move too slow often. Or, if they wanted to avoid doing that, they would have to try to preempt changes, and sometimes there would be Type 1 errors. Even when they predict things correctly, the things adaptation would demand mean that most of the time- maybe all of the time- it would end up being much more costly than expected. Red tape, construction delays, permitting problems, environmental impact reports, political fights, etc. And there would be failiures constantly. I can't at all envision adaptation being a thing that happens smoothly.
What’s the difference between “we’ll adapt” and Parable Of The Talents by Octavia Butler- 1998?