Shaye Wolf quoted in Earth Island Journal about adaptation to climate change

But maintaining a balance between mitigation and adaptation can be challenging in a nation where the politics of denial still rules; where the public is less likely to believe in global warming than it was five years ago. “I think the focus on adaptation, though important, really gives a false sense of security,” says Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It gives the impression that we will be able to adjust to whatever climate impacts we create. Even the term ‘adaptation’ implies we will be able to make a kind of evolutionary change to adjust.”

Wolf has a point. Big Industry’s lobbying outfits like the US Chamber of Commerce, which spent more than $30 million in the 2010 election funding candidates who were climate deniers, often use the idea of climate adaptation to oppose emissions curbs. Humans could “acclimatize” to a hotter world “via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations,” the chamber said in written comments to the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2009.

Wolf cautions that any talk of adaptation “must be done firmly within the context of mitigation.” That seems to be the consensus among environmental campaigners, who, while admitting the need for adaptation, are still leery of shifting the spotlight from mitigation. Old concerns persist.