{"id":203124,"date":"2025-12-26T18:52:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T18:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/203124\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T18:52:03","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T18:52:03","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-adapting-to-the-climate-crisis-it-demands-political-honesty-about-extreme-weather-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/203124\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on adapting to the climate crisis: it demands political honesty about extreme weather | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more<\/a> likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather<\/a> in Spain and Portugal during the summer was made 40 times more likely, while June\u2019s heatwave in England<\/a> was made 100 times more likely.<\/p>\n

Attribution science<\/a> has made one thing clear: global heating is behind today\u2019s extreme weather. That greenhouse gas emissions warmed the planet was understood. What can now be shown is that this warming produces record heatwaves and more violent storms with increasing frequency.<\/p>\n

What we can do to minimise, or at least reduce, the risks to life from such events \u2013 as well as more gradual changes \u2013 is what climate adaptation experts think about all the time. The alarming consensus is that we\u00a0are not doing anywhere near enough. The result is paid for in lives: floods and cyclonic storms across Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia<\/a> left hundreds dead at the end of November.<\/p>\n

The president of Cop30 in Brazil, Andr\u00e9 Corr\u00eaa do Lago, called for the UN climate change conference to be a \u201cCop of adaptation\u201d. But the governments of the most vulnerable countries went home from Bel\u00e9m angry about an outcome that saw the\u00a0projected size of the annual adaptation budget triple to $120bn<\/a>, but with the deadline pushed back to\u00a02035 and no clear mechanism<\/a> to make rich countries\u00a0pay up.<\/p>\n

Even that total falls short of the $300bn in climate finance<\/a> overall that was agreed at Cop29 in 2024. The risk is that without international support, heavily indebted countries such as Jamaica become trapped, with resources that ought to be directed towards green energy and future-proofing being spent instead on coping with disasters.<\/p>\n

But the need for preparation is not limited to low-lying countries and those most affected by extreme heat and violent storms. This imbalance in climate programmes can be seen all over the world. Last month, a group of UK scientists organised what they called a \u201cnational emergency briefing<\/a>\u201d in London in an effort to alert people to the scale of the climate crisis threat \u2013 and alarming underpreparedness.<\/p>\n

Everyday injustice<\/p>\n

In the global context, the politics of adaptation are clear<\/a>. Poorer countries, including the small island states whose existence is threatened by sea-level rises, have consistently argued that the rich nations whose historical and current emissions are responsible for climate heating must support them to adapt to the crisis, as well as to transition away from fossil fuels. Rightwing, nationalist governments in the west are extremely hostile to this idea \u2013 and to aid spending<\/a> more broadly \u2013 even if their most vociferous objections\u00a0are reserved for the phaseout of fossil fuels and net zero.<\/p>\n

But within wealthy countries, adaptation can appear more as a technocratic challenge than a political one. Policies regarding flood risks or increased resilience to high temperatures are not usually top priorities for voters \u2013 except when there is a disaster such as the floods in eastern Spain that led to the resignation of Carlos Maz\u00f3n, president of Valencia<\/a>, in November. While the grossly mismanaged water industry is a live political issue in England and Wales, big questions about natural resources and the resilience of infrastructure sit outside the daily cut and thrust, with responsibility delegated to arm\u2019s-length agencies and rarely touched on by party leaders.<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> from the UK\u2019s Glacier Trust and Climate Majority Project argued that charities and politicians should seek to change this, and promote an \u201caction-oriented public understanding of climate\u00a0risk\u201d. All must recognise that adaptation cannot simply be left to market forces because the economics of climate risk make private finance retreat just as danger rises.<\/p>\n

The long, low-profit investments needed to defend communities from flood, fire and heat are not attractive to private lenders. It is the state that must build seawalls or insure subsistence farmers when the risk becomes too great. Leah Aronowsky, a historian of science at Columbia University, says\u00a0that climate risk is everyday injustice made worse \u2013 and she is right<\/a> to argue that how we adapt\u00a0is a political battle.<\/p>\n

What adaptation should look like<\/p>\n

One reason that adaptation receives so little attention is the sheer urgency of cutting emissions. In the context of warnings that the 1.5C target in the Paris agreement could move out of reach<\/a>, mitigation \u2013 reducing or removing emissions \u2013 is the top priority.<\/p>\n

Discussing preparations for global heating can feel like a distraction or even an admission of defeat. But while it makes sense for climate campaigners to maintain the strongest possible pressure for emissions cuts, there ought to be scope to get ready for a hotter, more unstable climate as well. Under the terms of the UK\u2019s Climate Change Act, the government is legally obliged to do so, and to regularly review its preparations.<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s Climate Change Committee will soon outline what a truly \u201cwell-adapted<\/a>\u201d country should\u00a0look like: flood defences that can withstand the storms to come, transport links built for a harsher climate, food and supply chains resilient to global shocks, and coastal communities protected rather than abandoned. Experts also want to ensure that the 1.5m homes that the government has pledged to build in England alone are fit for the future. In an era of polarised attacks on net zero, such projects could help rebuild a shared belief in responsible care for the land.<\/p>\n

For the rich world, adaptation is prudent. For the poor world, it is survival. The latest UN report<\/a> is unequivocal: developing countries will need more than $310bn annually by 2035, yet received just $26bn in 2023. Catastrophic floods in Asia<\/a> and worsening droughts in Africa<\/a> this year point to the growing need to accelerate climate adaptation.<\/p>\n

Under the Paris agreement, nationally determined contributions<\/a> (NDCs) \u2013 country plans to tackle global heating \u2013 are meant to cover both emissions reduction and adaptation to\u00a0climate impacts.<\/p>\n

But NDCs end up focusing mostly on cutting greenhouse gases and establishing decarbonisation pathways. That needs to change. National adaptation plans<\/a>, which came out of Cop16, need to be foregrounded. These put adaptation<\/a> centre stage \u2013 and demand real plans, real finance, real justice. They ask the question that really matters now: how do vulnerable nations survive a warming world that emissions cuts alone can\u2019t stop?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-203124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}