“We can adapt to climate change… and there are lots of opportunities for change, lots of things that would be harmonious with sustainable development,” said
Neil Adger, a professor at the University of East Anglia and leading researcher on adaptation at the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK. “But saying we can change and can adapt does not mean to say we necessarily will adapt to climate change.”
In this short video, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko speaks with Adger outside the Global Environmental Change and Human Security conference in Oslo, Norway. As an environmental economist, Adger believes the need to mitigate and adapt to current and future climate shifts is unambiguous. Adger recently co-edited a new book with colleagues Irene Lorenzoni and Karen O’Brien, entitled Adapting to Climate Change: Thresholds, Values, Governance, in which they present the latest interdisciplinary research on adaptation.
Adger warns against relying on geo-engineering, or rearranging Earth’s atmospheric dynamics, as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” He says “there are significant inherent dangers with just about every serious geo-engineering technology being discussed.”
For more information regarding geo-engineering, read The Climate Engineers, an essay by former Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar James Fleming, which discusses the evolution of radical ideas to control atmospheric patterns.
