To mitigate or to adapt: how to combat with global climate change (original) (raw)
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To Mitigate or To Adapt? Strategies for Combating with Climate Change
2007
Adaptation and mitigation are the most important policy options in respond-ing to the threat of global climate change. But even if adaptation and mitigation were equally effective in protecting against potential damages from global warm-ing, there are significant differences ...
Mitigation, Adaptation, Suffering': In Search of the Right Mix in the Face of Climate Change
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The usually assumed two categories of costs involved in climate change policy analysis, namely abatement and damage costs, hide the presence of a third category, namely adaptation costs. This dodges the determination of an appropriate level for them. Including adaptation costs explicitly in the total environmental cost function allows one to characterize the optimal (cost minimizing) balance between the three categories, in statics as well as in dynamics. Implications are derived for cost benefit analysis of adaptation expenditures.
To Mitigate or To Adapt: How to combat with Climate Change
The strategic interaction between mitigation and adaptation is analyzed with a non-cooperative game, where regions are players, and where mitigation and adap- tation are prefect substitutes in protecting against climate impacts. We allow for step by step decision making, where mitigation is chosen rst and adaptation sec- ond, and where the benets of mitigation accrue only in the future. If marginal costs of adaptation negatively depend on global mitigation and if regions are rel- atively rich in terms of income, they simultaneously invest in both mitigation and adaptation. However, if regions are relatively poor, they engage in mitigation only. JEL-classication: C72, H41, Q25
The complementarity and comparability of climate change adaptation and mitigation
WIREs Climate Change, 2015
Both mitigation and adaptation can reduce the risks of climate change. This study reviews the complementarity and comparability between the two, looking first at the global level and then at the national-to-local domain. At the global level, the review finds differing definitions and viewpoints exist in the literature. Much of the economic literature reports that global mitigation and adaptation are substitutes (in economic terms). In contrast, the scientific literature considers them to be complementary (in policy terms), as they address different risks that vary temporally and spatially. The degree of complementarity and comparability therefore depends on the perspective taken, although there is a policy space where the two can overlap. However, the governance, institutional, and policybased literature identifies that even if a global mitigation and adaptation mix could be defined, it would be highly contentious and extremely difficult to deliver in practice. The review then considers the complementarity and comparability of mitigation and adaptation at the national-to-local domain, in national policy and at sector level. The review finds there is greater potential for complementarity at this scale, although possible conflicts can also exist. However, the institutional, governance, and policy literature identifies a number of barriers to practical implementation, and as a result, complementary mitigation and adaptation action is unlikely to happen autonomously. Finally, the lessons from the review are drawn together to highlight policy relevant issues and identify research gaps.
Mitigation and adaptation to climate change
Climate change produces significant social and economic impacts in most parts of the world, thus global action is needed to address climate change. In this paper I will study the different possibilities of mitigation from different points of view, and analyse the possibilities of adaptation to climate change. First, substantial reduction of GHG emission is needed, on the other hand adaptation action must deal with the inevitable impacts. According to my assessment, it is essential that coordinated actions be taken at an EU level. In my argumentation I will use a macroeconomic model for the cost-benefit analysis of GHG gas emissions reduction. I will analyse the GHG emission structure on a European and world level. Even in case of a successful mitigation strategy there rest the long-term effects of climate change which will need a coherent adaptation strategy to address. Although certain adaptation measures already have been made, these initiatives are still very modest, and insufficient to deal with the economic effects of climate change properly.
1996
This paper deals with the often ignored issue of adaptation to human-induced climate change. Adaptation is not only inevitable but essential to fashioning the least-social-cost strategy to addressing climate change. The urgency for limiting climate change is inversely proportional to society's adaptability. Some mitigation strategies are incompatible with adaptation goals (e.g., reducing CO 2 rather than equivalent amounts of other greenhouse gases may compromise several adaptation goals) and climate change impacts-and, therefore, benefits-analysis must necessarily incorporate adaptation. The paper provides criteria for evaluating policy options, and identifies options compatible with both mitigation and adaptation that would also help address current urgent problems.
Adaptation, mitigation, and their disharmonious discontents: an essay
The frequently heard call to harmonize adaptation and mitigation policies is well intended and many opportunities exist to realize co-benefits by designing and implementing both in mutually supportive ways. But critical tradeoffs (inadequate conditions, competition among means for implementation, and negative consequences of pursuing both simultaneously) also exist, along with policy disconnects that are shaped by history, sequencing, scale, contextual variables, and controversial climate discourses in the public. To ignore these issues can be expected to undermine a more comprehensive, better integrated climate risk management portfolio. The paper discusses various implications of these tradeoffs between adaptation and mitigation for science and policy.
Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics
Given the current status of the climate crisis, preventing climate change altogether is no longer a possibility. There is simply no way to avoid serious, climate-related harms. We have already seen atmospheric carbon dioxide rise above 400 ppm and a temperature rise greater than 0.7 degrees centigrade since the beginning of the twentieth century. Even with an immediate and radical reduction in our emissions, an even greater temperature rise is almost certain. This current state of affairs has made many recognize the need to adapt, and even to examine limited geoengineering efforts. Yet while mitigation, adaptation, and geoengineering are not mutually exclusive options, regardless of what other measures are pursued, mitigation remains an indispensable part of any morally appropriate response to climate change.
To mitigate or to adapt: How to confront global climate change
European Journal of Political Economy, 2011
We analyze the strategic interaction between mitigation and adaptation in a non-cooperative game in which regions are players and mitigation and adaptation are perfect substitutes in protecting against climate impacts. We allow for step by step decision making, with mitigation chosen first and adaptation second, and where the benefits of mitigation accrue only in the future. If marginal costs of adaptation decline with global mitigation, high income regions simultaneously invest in mitigation and adaptation. Low income regions engage in mitigation only.