Mitigation and adaptation
Climate change is already under way, so every response to it does one of two jobs. It either tries to slow the change down, or it helps people cope with the change that is coming anyway. Geographers call these two jobs mitigation and adaptation, and nearly every policy, building project or international agreement can be sorted using them.
Action that reduces the cause of climate change, usually by cutting the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere or by removing gas that is already there.
Action that adjusts how people live so that they suffer less harm from the effects of climate change, such as flooding, heat or rising seas.
A useful way to fix the difference is to shrink each idea down. As a sentence, mitigation means lowering the greenhouse gas emissions that drive warming. As a phrase, it is tackling the cause. As one word, it is reduce. As a sentence, adaptation means changing homes, cities and ways of life so they can cope with a warmer world. As a phrase, it is living with the effects. As one word, it is adjust.
Think of a bath that is overflowing. Turning down the tap is mitigation, because it deals with the source of the water.
Moving your belongings onto a shelf is adaptation, because the floor is still getting wet but you are protected from the damage. A sensible plan does both.
Mitigation is usually led by governments, because cutting emissions across a whole country needs laws, taxes and large investments. Adaptation happens at every scale, from a national sea wall down to a single family raising its house. The effects that adaptation responds to are covered in the lesson on climate change consequences.
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