Preparing for Climate Change

Global momentum is building to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So far, so good. Theless happy news is that Earth's temperatures will continue to rise for decades. And evidence showsthat climbing temperatures are already having serious consequences for vulnerable people and regionsthrough droughts, extreme weather, and melting glaciers. In this book, climate experts MichaelMastrandrea and Stephen Schneider argue that we need to start adapting to climate change, now. Theywrite that these efforts should focus primarily on identifying the places and people most at riskand taking anticipatory action--from developing drought-resistant crops to building sea walls. Theauthors roundly reject the idea that reactive, unplanned adaptation will solve our problems--thatspecies will migrate northward as climates warm, and farmers will shift to new crops and morehospitable locations. And they are highly critical of "geoengineering" schemes that aredesigned to cool the planet by such methods as injecting iron into oceans or exploding volcanoes.Mastrandrea and Schneider insist that smart adaptation will require a series of local and regionalprojects, many of them in the countries least able to pay for them and least responsible for theproblem itself. Ensuring that we address the needs of these countries, while we work globally toreduce emissions over the long term, is our best chance to avert global disaster and to reduce theterrible, unfair burdens that are likely to accompany global warming.

Robert E. Hunter is a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C.During 1993--1998, he was U.S. ambassador to NATO.