> I think "discount rate" economics formalizes that
> argument.
A major way to motivate people to act is to present the danger as
imminent, ie to emphasise that global warming is causing damage now.
You know that emissions reductions aren't a "quick fix", but the
reason Katrina for example is getting so much attention is precisely
that people do discount. It's not as if economists had made this human
trait up out of thin air.
It happens that an urgent problem also calls out for a rapid solution,
be it adapatation or mitigation.
I think the emphasis on urgency does have the side effect of
misrepresenting an important aspect of the issue, namely that both
adaptation and mitigation are mainly long range.
Which is where I am coming back to Gareth's point about adaptation in
the near term and where I largely agree with James Annan. It would be
jolly nice to have better tools to predict regional climate. If say,
there was to be a repeat of the 1930's dust bowl in the 2010's,
knowing about it now might indeed help policy makers to prepare. But
such a tool would be similarly useful absent anthropogenic climate
change.
When we are talking about concrete adaptation decisions such as how
high to build dikes around New Orleans, or what to do about flood
insurance for the large flood of people heading towards the Southern
shores of the US, actually I think the effect of assuming 8 or
alternatively 16 cm sea level rise by 2030 is pretty negligible
compared to other factors.
So, I do think adaptation is important, but not in the sense that: "Oh
we can't prevent another 16 Katrinas between now and 2023 by cutting
emissions that we have now suddenly become aware are likely to happen
because of climate change and therefore haven't planned for, therefore
we better get working real quick on at least building the dikes we
didn't previously anticipate we'd need, and that absent further
climate change we wouldn't need."
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