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<header class="css-d92687"> (Artikel uit vorig jaar..)<br>
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<h1 class="css-12oljxu">New Climate Debate: How to Adapt
to the End of the World</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">Christopher
Flavelle</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">bloomberg.com</div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">September 26, 2018, 10:00 AM
GMT+2</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">6 min</div>
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<p>At the end of 2016, before
Puerto Rico’s power grid
collapsed, wildfires reached the
Arctic, and a large swath of
North Carolina was submerged
under floodwaters, Jonathan
Gosling published an <a
href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742715016680675"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">academic paper</a>
asking what might have seemed
like a shrill question: How
should we prepare for the
consequences of planetary
climate catastrophe?</p>
<p>“If some of the more extreme
scenarios of ecocrisis turn out
to be accurate, we in the West
will be forced to confront such
transformations,” wrote Gosling,
an anthropologist who’d just
retired from the University of
Exeter in England.</p>
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<p>Almost two years later, as the
U.S. stumbles through a second
consecutive season of record
hurricanes and fires, more
academics are approaching
questions once reserved for
doomsday cults. Can modern
society prepare for a world in
which global warming threatens
large-scale social, economic,
and political upheaval? What are
the policy and social
implications of rapid, and
mostly unpleasant, climate
disruption?</p>
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<p>Those researchers, who are
generally more pessimistic about
the pace of climate change than
most academics, are advocating
for a series of changes—in
infrastructure, agriculture and
land-use management,
international relations, and our
expectations about life—to help
manage the effects of
crisis-level changes in weather
patterns.</p>
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<p>In the language of climate
change, “<a
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-20/hurricane-proof-homes-are-real-why-isn-t-anyone-buying-them"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">adaptation</a>”
refers to ways to blunt the
immediate effects of extreme
weather, such as building
seawalls, conserving drinking
water, updating building codes,
and helping more people get
disaster insurance. The costs
are enormous: The U.S.
government is considering a
5-mile, $20 billion <a
href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/army-corps-proposes-giant-hurricane-barrier-across-new-york-bay/"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">seawall</a> to
protect New York City against
storm surges, while Louisiana
wants to spend $50 billion to <a
href="http://coastal.la.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-Coastal-Master-Plan-Released_2017-04-21_Final.pdf"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">save parts of its
shoreline</a> from sinking.
Poorer countries could require <a
href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/05/unep-report-cost-of-adapting-to-climate-change-could-hit-500b-per-year-by-2050/"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">$500 billion a
year</a> to adapt, according
to the United Nations.</p>
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<p>But some researchers are going
further, calling for what some
call the “deep adaptation
agenda.” For Gosling, that means
not only rapid decarbonization
and storm-resistant
infrastructure, but also
building water and
communications systems that
won’t fail if the power grid
collapses and searching for ways
to safeguard the food supply by
protecting pollinating insects.</p>
<p>Propelling the movement are
signs that the problem is
worsening at an accelerating
rate. In an article this summer
in the <em>Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences</em>,
16 climate scientists from
around the world argued that the
planet may be much closer than
previously realized to locking
in what they call a “<a
href="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">hothouse</a>”
trajectory—warming of 4C or 5C
(7F or 9F), “with serious
challenges for the viability of
human societies.”</p>
<p>Jem Bendell, a professor at the
University of Cumbria who
popularized the term deep
adaptation, calls it a mix of
physical changes—pulling back
from the coast, closing
climate-exposed industrial
facilities, planning for food
rationing, letting landscapes
return to their natural
state—with cultural shifts,
including “giving up
expectations for certain types
of consumption” and learning to
rely more on the people around
us.</p>
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<p>“The evidence before us
suggests that we are set for
disruptive and uncontrollable
levels of climate change,
bringing starvation,
destruction, migration, disease
and war,” he wrote in a <a
href="http://iflas.blogspot.com/2018/07/new-paper-on-deep-adaptation-to-climate.html"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">paper he posted on
his blog</a> in July after an
academic journal refused to
publish it. “We need to
appreciate what kind of
adaptation is possible.”</p>
</div>
<div><br>
<p>It might be tempting to dismiss
Bendell and Gosling as outliers.
But they’re not alone in writing
about the possibility of massive
political and social shocks from
climate change and the need to
start preparing for those
shocks. Since posting his paper,
Bendell says he’s been contacted
by more academics investigating
the same questions. A LinkedIn
group titled “Deep Adaptation”
includes professors, government
scientists, and investors.</p>
<p>William Clark, a Harvard
professor and former MacArthur
Fellow who edited the <em>Proceedings
of the National Academy of
Sciences</em> paper, is among
those who worry about what might
come next. “We are right on the
bloody edge,” he says.</p>
<p>Clark argues that in addition
to quickly and dramatically
cutting emissions, society
should pursue a new scale of
adaptation work. Rather than
simply asking people to water
their lawns less often, for
example, governments need to
consider large-scale,
decades-long infrastructure
projects, such as transporting
water to increasingly arid
regions and moving cities away
from the ocean.</p>
<p>“This is not your grandfather’s
adaptation,” he says.</p>
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<p>Diana Liverman, a professor at
the University of Arizona School
of Geography and Development and
one of the authors of this
summer’s paper, says adapting
will mean “relocation or
completely different
infrastructure and crops.” She
cites last year’s book <em>New
York 2140</em>, in which the
science fiction author Kim
Stanley Robinson imagines the
city surviving under 50 feet of
water, as “the extreme end of
adaptation.”</p>
<p>Relocating large numbers of
homes away from the coast is
perhaps the most expensive item
on that list. The U.S. Federal
Emergency Management Agency has
spent <a
href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/rob-moore/congress-wants-know-why-fema-buyouts-take-long"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">$2.8 billion</a>
since 1989 to buy 40,000 homes
in areas particularly prone to
flooding, giving their owners
the chance to move somewhere
safer. But if seas rose 3 feet,
more than <a
href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2961"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer">4 million
Americans</a> would have to
move, according to a 2016 study
in the journal <em>Nature:
Climate Change</em>.</p>
<p>“The government’s going to have
to spend more money to help
relocate people,” says Rob
Moore, a policy expert at the
Natural Resources Defense
Council who specializes in
flooding. The alternative, he
says, is “a completely unplanned
migration of hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of
people in this country.”</p>
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<p>Cameron Harrington, a professor
of international relations at
Durham University in England and
co-author of the 2017 book <a
href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/security-in-the-anthropocene/9783837633375"
itemprop="StoryLink"
itemscope="itemscope"
target="_blank" rel="noopener
noreferrer"><em>Security in
the Anthropocene</em></a>,
says adapting to widespread
disruption will require
governments to avoid viewing
climate change primarily as a
security threat. Instead,
Harrington says, countries must
find new ways to manage problems
that cross borders—for example,
by sharing increasingly scarce
freshwater resources. “We can’t
raise border walls high enough
to prevent the effects of
climate change,” he says.</p>
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<p>There are even more pessimistic
takes. Guy McPherson, a
professor emeritus of natural
resources at the University of
Arizona, contends climate change
will cause civilization to
collapse not long after the
summer Arctic ice cover
disappears. He argues that could
happen as early as next year,
sending global temperatures
abruptly higher and causing
widespread food and fuel
shortages within a year.</p>
<p>Many academics are considerably
less dire in their predictions.
Jesse Keenan, who teaches at the
Harvard Graduate School of
Design and advises state
governments on climate
adaptation, says warnings about
social collapse are overblown.
“I think for much of the world,
we will pick up the pieces,”
Keenan says. But he adds that
the prospect of climate-induced
human extinction has only
recently become a widespread
topic of academic discourse.</p>
<p>Even mainstream researchers
concede there’s room for concern
about the effects of
accelerating change on social
stability. Solomon Hsiang, a
professor at the University of
California at Berkeley who
studies the interplay between
the environment and society,
says it’s too soon to predict
the pace of global warming. But
he warns that society could
struggle to cope with rapid
shifts in the climate.</p>
<p>“If they are indeed dramatic
and fast, there exists
substantial evidence that many
human systems, including food
production and social stability
more broadly, will be sharply
and adversely affected,” Hsiang
says.</p>
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<p>For Bendell, the question of
when climate change might shake
the Western social order is less
important than beginning to talk
about how to prepare for it. He
acknowledges that his premise
shares something with the
survivalist movement, which is
likewise built on the belief
that some sort of social
collapse is coming.</p>
<p>But he says deep adaptation is
different: It looks for ways to
mitigate the damage of that
collapse. “The discussion I’m
inviting is about collective
responses to reduce harm,” he
says, “rather than how a few
people could tough it out to
survive longer than others.”</p>
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