Adapting to the loss of climate normal
Authors: None The Lancet Planetary Health
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2021)

Climate change denial has gone through a well-documented sequence: deny it's happening, deny we are causing it, deny it's a problem, deny we can solve it, it's too late. None of these arguments are new, as shown by a 2013 article in The Guardian, but all can still be seen in operation today in various forums, though the last two are now most common as the nature of the events we are witnessing all around us make the first three increasingly hard to sustain. In the early days of climate change concern, climatic changes were mostly expected to be seen in the future and it was hard to detect the fingerprint of climate change in the noise of climate variability. That is no longer true: we have now experienced about a 1°C increase in the global average temperature since preindustrial times, with no indication of that slowing without a significant galvanisation of international climate policy implementation. Consequently, we are witnessing extreme events—compared to our past experiences—all the time and their reporting is now commonplace. Even so, the major floods and resulting tragic loss of life in Europe and China, and recent ‘record-shattering’ heat, and associated wildfires, in north America are remarkable even against the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these events are now rapidly assessed in terms of the change in their likelihood under climate change. Recent extreme weather and its social and economic consequences reveal that we are not sufficiently prepared for the climate of today, let alone the increasingly intense extreme events expected as the climate continues to heat. Needless to say, the most effective way to prevent climate damages is to mitigate the risk through rapid and steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. However, we have climatic changes that are now already here or locked in, and we need to adapt to those if we are to maintain critical infrastructure and minimise the risks to lives and livelihoods. Theoretically, at least some adaptation to climate change should be relatively easy to implement, compared to mitigation, because it is in most actors’ direct self-interest, rather than requiring global collective action. So, is there evidence that we are adapting well to changing climates? The UK case is perhaps illustrative. Politicians are keen on claiming to be world leading, but the UK had some legitimacy in that claim when they passed the Climate Change Act in 2008. One of the obligations under that act was a periodic assessment of climate change risks to the nation and the third such report was recently released by the UK's Committee on Climate Change. As a rich nation with high technical capacity, relatively progressive climate policies, and an established process of climate risk assessment, we might expect the UK to be making good progress in the effective management of the risks posed by climate change. This latest report tells a very different story, however, revealing instead a widening gap between the climate risks facing the UK and government plans to protect people from them. According to the Committee's chair, Baroness Brown, this results from climate adaptation being “under-resourced, underfunded and often ignored”. That is disappointing news when climate change impacts are increasingly obvious and impactful. The report explains that increased efforts to adapt to climate change could save lives and money, and are also needed to maintain a resilient electrical grid and healthy forests, both of which are important components of the UK's legally binding goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. In other words, failing to adapt to ongoing climatic changes is imperilling citizens, the economy, and climate mitigation plans. It is hard to understand what kind of thinking is motivating this lack of action. The UK situation is just one case among many, but the increasing incidence of extreme events and their human consequences seem to suggest failure to adequately adapt to climate change is widespread even among the wealthiest nations. It is high time adaptation to climate change was taken more seriously and those efforts integrated with climate mitigation plans. Failure to do so is short sighted in the extreme.