Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 525
Page 525
33
Methods and Tools
Methods of Adaptation
Although one cannot be sure how nature and humanity would cope
with a new climate, past hazards of weather and changes of climate
and the seasons and climates on the planet today give hints of
impacts and adaptations.
Adjustment by Nature
Nature on a given tract of land is a system, or ecosystem, of
plants, animals, and microbes. If circumstances do not change in a
very old forest, for example, the system may cycle with little
change in composition in the manner shown by the circle on the left
of Figure 33.1. If circumstances change, however, the system
adjusts to an alternate composition through a succession as some
species grow less numerous while others flourish because they are
better suited to the new circumstances. Because flowering,
fruiting, and germinating of seed are sensitive to climate, the
first adjustment in a system in response to changing climate would
probably be failure of some present species to reproduce. This
would be followed by the chancy stage of invasion of new species
from outside or expansion of species already on the tract but
formerly held in check. An opening, the presence of a seed, and the
arrival of a seed are all random events in nature. This stage is
depicted on the right of Figure 33.1.
Fossils show that, during a climate change, trees lag in
adjustment behind other organisms, because either the dispersal of
seeds or the development of soils is slow. Disturbances like fires
have accompanied past changes in climate and speeded up the
adjustments in vegetation. Trees might persist despite a rapid
warming or cooling but then be disturbed by a fire,
OCR for page 526
Page 526
FIGURE 33.1 Growth, thinning by competition, and
death of a tract of forest is a cycle.
NOTE: The stage
of Death/Regeneration is the ''most stochastic" or most uncertain
stage. It could lead
to "alternate composition" of the forest, that is, a succeeding
and different species mix.
SOURCE:
Reprinted, by permission, from Shugart et al. (1986). Copyright
© 1986 by SCOPE.
storm, or pest. With the death of the persistent trees, the
forest would then adjust more rapidly.
Other forces will likely affect the natural system on the tract
and its adjustment to climate. People may clear, plant, manage, or
abandon the tract; storms could uproot the trees; or fires might
blacken the landscape. Their impacts may obscure or modify those of
climate change. Or, as explained above, they may hasten the
adjustment of the forest to the new climate.
An alternative to thinking of the adjustments on a given tract
of land is thinking of the migration of an ecosystem or community
from tract to tract in response to climate changes.
Communities are composed of species populations
… connected by a web of interspecific relationships that
have evolved over thousands or millions of years. If entire
communities or all the species except for a few minor ones migrate,
these community interactions may be preserved. In the highly
disturbed
OCR for page 527
Page 527
and man-influenced global ecosystem, however, it
is doubtful that intact ecosystems can survive by migration.
(Strain and Bazzaz, 1983)
Still another way of thinking of changes in organisms is to
think of an individual species. Within a species, under a changed
climate, natural selection would favor the combination of genes
that was best suited to the new climate and would tend to eliminate
other combinations. If no individuals within the species could
compete successfully in the changed climate or were not present or
could not reach a favorable climate elsewhere, the species could be
extinguished.
Instead, if climate changes rapidly, new communities or
ecosystems dominated by pioneer rather than climax species are
likely to emerge on the margins of zones and populations. There,
long-lived things like trees would persist, but if they were ill
adapted would fail to reproduce. New kinds of life fitted to the
new climate would grow up through the persisting individuals,
sometimes hastened by a disturbance. Adapted species already
present in a mixture or pioneers from afar could have an advantage
in the new climate.
Adaptation by Humanity
The range of climates where people live successfully indicates
that societies can cope with wide variations in climate. The main
way that people adapt to changing climate is by adapting to
variability in climate. This is especially true when people are
regularly adapting to changes in farming, forestry, construction,
and all the other changes that require one to discard old and take
up new ways of doing things. Disasters caused by severe weather and
degradation of the environment do, nevertheless, illustrate the
kinds of large disruptions that could accompany change and
adaptation. What lessons can we learn from the adaptations people
have made?
The first lesson arises from a survey of the types of responses
to hazardous events made in dozens of cases. Although rapid and
continuous climate change might eventually outstrip the efficacy of
these adjustments that worked for extremes in the past climates,
they nevertheless provide a menu of five potential choices: (1)
modify the hazard, as by seeding clouds; (2) prevent or limit
impacts, as by dikes; (3) move or avoid the loss, as by flood plain
zoning; (4) share the loss, as by insurance; and (5) bear the loss,
as by rebuilding a house (White, 1974; Burton et al., 1978).
Additional factors affecting this simple menu are whether the
adjustment is made before or after an event and whether the
adjustment is understood, practical, and affordable. Another factor
is the possibility that a climate change might be helpful rather
than hazardous. Figure 33.2 separates the adjustments into
purposeful and incidental kinds and shows whether they precede or
follow an event.
By adjusting to extremes of the current climate, society has
already made
OCR for page 528
Page 528
FIGURE 33.2 A choice tree.
NOTE: Adjustment
begins with an initial choice of a resource use, livelihood system,
and location. For that choice
various incidental and purposeful adjustments are available, at
somewhat different time scales for initiation.
The most radical choice is to change the original use or
location.
SOURCE:
Reprinted, by permission, from Burton et al. (1978). Copyright
© 1978 by Oxford University Press.
investments that would absorb some climate change. The United
States has invested $70 billion to $80 billion in local and
regional controls for water from storms and floods. Much is
invested in heating and air conditioning, coastal protection, and
irrigation.
Even in exposed activities like managing water and farming, the
capacity to adapt can be high, although the cost may also be high.
Past responses are analogs that illuminate how well society might
deal with future climate change (Glantz, 1988). One such example
was supplied by Indonesia, which set the goal of improving rice
growing to make the country self-sufficient during the 1980s. In
1982–1983 a severe drought cut the yield 10 percent or more
in some areas, slowing the attainment of self-sufficiency. Farmers,
however, planted more off-season crops and increased the yield of
second-crop rice through careful cultivation and management of
water. So despite the drought, rice production was resilient,
production in no province returned to the low levels before 1980,
and within 2 years the trend toward self-sufficiency was restored
(Malingreau, 1987). While the Indonesian farmers adapted to a drier
situation that proved temporary, this example shows the character
of adaptation. Moreover, in a world of rapidly and
OCR for page 529
Page 529
continually changing climate, many adaptations will necessarily
have a temporary orientation.
In the United States, water managers have sometimes decreased
the annual fluctuations in supply without large construction
projects. In California, managers worked with users to reduce peak
demand and accommodated annual differences in supply. They
explicitly recognized climate instability and built adjustments to
extremes of wet and dry into reservoir operations. The new
procedures smoothed out the feast and famine caused by the old
procedure. In Arizona, a quick and effective adaptation to a series
of wet years occurred during the early 1980s (Phillips and Jordon,
1986; Riebsame, 1988).
Adaptation is part of the interaction between society and its
environment. Prompt and effective adaptation in that interacting
system requires information. It requires that messages be sent and,
a rarer thing, that messages be perceived. The clearest lesson from
the study of natural hazards is that the key obstacles are not
technical but rather involve economics, information, and perception
of the threat (Mitchell, 1984).
Messages about a slow change in climate could be misread in two
ways, underreading and overreading. Years of experience slant our
expectation of the climate of the next decade toward the past one,
which is underreading if climate is changing. For example, managers
of water systems reported they would keep designing for the climate
of the past until they saw a change or heard from a consensus of
distinguished authorities that it was changing (Morrisette, 1988;
Schwarz and Dillard, 1990), and other professions have a similar
expectation of stable climate (Holling, 1986).
If climate is not changing, overreading could be caused by
occasional extremes, even though they are only manifesting the
variability of the past. In the mid-nineteenth century the myth
spread that the climate of the Great Plains was permanently changed
for the better and that human settlement itself would improve it
further. After farmers flooded into the largely uncultivated
margins of the frontier, the forgotten variability of the weather
brought drought, and the drought displaced nearly 300,000 Great
Plains farmers back to the East and out to the West Coast (Warrick
and Bowden, 1981). The hot summer of 1988 cannot be proven to be
part of climate change, but many saw it that way, illustrating the
potential influence of extreme events on debates over the reality
and significance of climate change.
Environmental problems that elicit action are generally those
that are serious, soon, certain, and soluble. The last point is
key, since experience with the mitigation of natural and
technological hazards has shown that people respond less
effectively when information about the problem stresses its causes
and nature rather than possible solutions. Information about
climate must be connected to the experiences of real people and to
specific and feasible adjustments or it will be ignored. Because
climate change is
OCR for page 530
Page 530
neither certain nor soon and not easily soluble by a few people,
remedies for related, more certain problems like drought should be
stressed and linked to climate change where feasible. Examples are
suggested below (White, 1988; Ingram et al., 1990; Riebsame,
1990).
Since people feel the events of the moment or year, not the
trend line, they will be affected by and adapt to the size or
frequency of extremes. We react more strongly to worsened storm
surges than to a gradual rise of the sea, more to droughts than to
lower average precipitation, and more to heat waves than to gradual
warming.
In the United States the history of responses to natural hazards
is one of major events calling forth rushes of legislation (May,
1985; National Research Council, 1987). Some of these events have
evoked investments that greatly increase our adaptability to
climate change. Other investments may delay lasting adaptation,
like disaster aid that encourages reconstruction on a flood plain,
or the response of the markets and the government to the summer of
1988 that encouraged the expansion of dryland farming in North
Dakota (White, 1975; Riebsame et al., 1991), or the planting of
citrus trees in freeze-prone sections of Florida (Miller and
Glantz, 1988).
Yet another lesson is that the impacts of climate change can be
greater at margins of climatic zones and for impoverished people.
For example, in the center of the Corn Belt fewer droughts might
raise corn yields only a bit, whereas on the belt's dry western
margin it could make corn a profitable crop. Where people are poor
and food costs much of their income, they may not have the mobility
to escape nor the money to import food when drought kills crops.
One bad climatic extreme can consume much of the gross national
product (GNP) of a small country, as has happened in Tanzania and
Nepal (Kates, 1980). Places and people with more resources adapt
more easily than those at the margins.
The Tools of Innovation
Much of the interaction between climate and humanity is
technological invention of the "hardware" and "software" tools that
are at the heart of adaptation (Ausubel, 1991). The hardware
includes tractors that can cultivate large tracts in a few days if
spring is late and air conditioners that make hot days comfortable.
The software is new information, rules, and behaviors such as
weather forecasts, insurance restrictions, and repair of leaky
faucets. Software is usually indispensable for adopting new
hardware. Major breakthroughs like irrigation usually depend on
clusters of new social organization and financing as well as new
machinery.
Many past innovations in hardware and software have helped
people adapt to climate and variable weather: in 1873,
preservatives for food in warm weather; in 1879, incandescent bulbs
for dark days; in 1885, gasoline-powered
OCR for page 531
Page 531
automobiles to travel the open road; in 1887, aluminum to resist
corrosion; in 1895–1906, refrigeration and air conditioning
for heat waves; in 1916, windshield wipers and in 1927, ethylene
glycol antifreeze to make travel easy in all weather; in 1930, the
first sales of frozen food to span summers; in 1934, radio beam
navigation; and in 1960, weather satellites to cope with storms.
The technology that allows humans to adapt to long-term climate
change will mostly be like that tempering the difference between
daytime warmth and nighttime cold, protecting us against storms and
heat waves, and helping us live in diverse climates today. No
qualitatively new technologies have been proposed to ease
adaptation to climate change that may be caused by greenhouse gas
emissions.
Experience shows that innovation can be fast in comparison with
the climate change envisioned for the next 50 to 100 years. In 1900
dry California had a small crop production, and in 1985 it produced
twice as many dollars of crops as second-place Iowa. In 1903 at
Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers flew 59 seconds in a favorable wind,
and in 1985 in the United States 380 million airplane passengers
flew 336 billion miles in all kinds of weather. Penicillin was
discovered in 1928, and by 1945 it was saving lives. The
microprocessor was introduced in 1971, and in 1990 Americans were
using 50 million personal computers (PCs). Both the character and
the extent of the impacts of climate change, and adaptation to it,
will in large part be a function of the rates of innovation and
diffusion of the technologies that continue to transform the human
economy.
Even though inventions and their adoption may occur quickly, we
must ask whether the broad spectrum of current capital investments
could be changed fast enough to match a change in climate in 50 to
100 years. As shown below, this period will comfortably allow the
replacement of major technological systems.
In fact, 50 years is enough time to turn over most capital
stock. About two-thirds of capital stock is usually in machinery
and equipment and one-third in buildings and other structures. In
Japan the average renewal period for capital stock in
business—the time it takes for machinery and equipment in an
industry to be almost entirely replaced—ranges from about 22
years in textiles down to 10 years or less in such fast-moving
industries as telecommunications and electrical machinery (Economic
Planning Agency, 1989). Renewal is fast in agriculture, too. The
estimated life span of the cultivars—varieties that have
originated and persisted under cultivation—of five major crops
in the United States is less than 10 years, and most experts
believe the life span of cultivars will grow shorter (Duvick,
1984).
Figure 33.3 shows the similar youth, compared to greenhouse
effects, of the capital stock in the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG) and the USSR for both machinery and such structures as
buildings and pipelines. For the FRG in 1985 some 60 percent of the
stock of structures was less than 20
OCR for page 532
Page 532
FIGURE 33.3 Age distribution of nonmachinery
capital stock in the FRG
for 1985 (white bars) and in the USSR as of 1986 (black bars).
SOURCE: Courtesy
of Jesse Ausubel.
years old (Statistiches Bundesamt, 1989). In the USSR in 1986
some 80 percent was less than 20 years old (USSR State Committee on
Statistics, undated).
At first such figures may seem surprising. Some of our surprise
arises from the justifiable value and thus attention we give to
precious monuments and localities like the cathedral of Notre Dame
or the city of Venice. Some reflection on the total equipment and
buildings we use daily, however, relieves our surprise at seeing
Figure 33.3. Consider the office space in a city, whether Hong
Kong, Milan, or Denver. Most of the space is in buildings built in
the last 20 years. These new buildings are filled with such new
equipment as telephone systems. Indeed, even older buildings are
filled with modern equipment, such as PCs and FAX machines, that
did not even exist 15 or 20 years ago. The same is true for
supermarkets, restaurants, and other stores, many of which are less
than 20 years old and in any case have modern cash registers and
furnishings. A large fraction of residences is similarly young and,
in turn, filled with new appliances of all kinds. In fact, if
societies grow at 2 to 3 percent per year, as industrialized
societies have for the past 150 years, then half of all capital
stock will always be less than 30 years old.
Probably the systems that take the longest to build are
infrastructures that provide transport, energy, water,
communications, and means of meeting other human needs. Once
constructed, many infrastructure systems are (or should be)
continuously reconstructed. For example, roads are resurfaced
OCR for page 533
OCR for page 534
OCR for page 535
OCR for page 536
OCR for page 537
OCR for page 538
OCR for page 539
OCR for page 540
Representative terms from entire chapter:
discount rate
Page 533
every decade or so, depending on use. The time required for
societies to bring forth such systems can be found. They are
typically completed in 50 ± 20 years (Grübler, 1990).
The 7,000-km canal system of the United States was almost entirely
built in about 30 years, between 1820 and 1850. More than 90
percent of the 300,000-mile U.S. railway network was laid in the 65
years between 1855 and 1920. The paving of virtually the entire 6
million-km surface road system of the United States was
accomplished between 1920 and 1985. The U.S. interstate highway
system was completed, with some localized exceptions, in about 30
years from the time that it was announced by President Eisenhower.
It is interesting to consider whether climate change could require
any public works on this scale; coastal protection and interbasin
water transfer would seem the most likely candidates. Because the
siting process for infrastructures can be lengthy, siting is needed
early if a decision is anticipated in favor of construction of a
major new infrastructure to adapt to changing climate or rising
seas.
Because capital stock is continuously turning over on a time
scale of a few decades, it will be possible to put in place much
technology that is adjusted to a changing climate. This can be done
without extraordinary measures given reasonably accurate
information about the future. For the shortest lifetimes, even
accurate information about the present climate will do. The fact
that perhaps 90 percent of the capital stock in place in the year
2040 will have been built after 1990 does not diminish the
significance of some long-lived structures. Action may be necessary
to protect cities such as Venice, where preservation of historic
buildings is the goal. In such cases the fact that much new
investment outpaces climate change is not helpful, as processes of
replacement are not relevant. However, there is time to do what may
be indicated, if the political will and money exist.
Innovation contributes toward making human society less subject
to natural phenomena, at least in the short term. With current
technology, people can live in virtually any climate that now
exists. Heating and cooling, along with medicine and sanitation,
have enabled many to inhabit regions that were previously
uninhabitable, although reducing vulnerability further may become
more difficult and expensive if long-term problems of energy and
water availability are not solved. At the same time, it is hard to
envision how natural ecosystems could possibly be
climate-proofed.
However, it is innovations and technology along with population
and economic growth that are currently causing many global changes,
not only in climate (increases in CO2, CH4,
N2O, and chlorofluorocarbons [CFCs])
but also in depletion of the ozone layer (CFCs), pollution, habitat
degradation, etc. Thus, technology and growth, at least in our
recent experience, come with prices that were unforeseen, including
higher energy consumption. As a result, exclusive reliance on
technology to adapt to climate must be viewed with caution.
Page 534
Just as settlement has become feasible nearly everywhere,
production can now proceed continuously, or nearly so, in severe
environments. Pumps extract oil 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in
the stormy North Sea. Consumption is also becoming insulated from
the environment, not only in Minneapolis and Houston, but also to
some extent in New Delhi and Bangkok. Inside shopping malls, only
fashions and decorations signal the season. Sports are played
increasingly under domes where fans do not know whether it is windy
or pouring outside. Where people must be aware of weather, they can
prepare for it, because forecasts have become much more accurate in
the past two decades, especially in temperature latitudes (World
Meteorological Organization, 1988).
Improved technology and social organization seem to have
lessened the impacts of climate fluctuations on farming during the
past 100 years in the United States (Warrick, 1980). Further
evidence for the "lessening hypothesis" is found in a flattening of
monthly rates of total mortality in Japan between 1899 and 1973.
The flattening is explained in part by the diminution of winter and
summer mortality peaks that used to be associated with exposure to
cold and heat (Weihe, 1979). That the peak season for vacations in
developed countries is late summer—a peak season for labor in
agricultural societies—further indicates the transformation
that has taken place.
Making Decisions in an Uncertain
World
A facile recommendation about adaptation is "factor in climate
change." We, however, are and will remain uncertain about climate
change and its effect on temperature, moisture, and sea level. We
shall be especially uncertain of the specifics for a locality where
people are mulling over the construction of a dam, bridge, or
seawall. So, what method can factor in climate change?
One method is to postpone decisions until the climate prediction
is less uncertain. In an economic analysis, decisions concerning
climate change were exemplified by whether or not to build a
seawall. The economical course turned out to be to lay the
foundation for the wall and wait to learn more before spending more
(Yohe, 1990).
Uncertainty is generally lowered by cycles of prediction
followed by observation, testing the prediction, and revising it.
So long as prior predictions are iffy, however, the revised or
posterior predictions later in the cycles will be only a little
more certain (Fiering and Matalas, 1990). Given this prospect of
continuing uncertainty, a method is needed for decisions about
adaptation during the building of things with long lives. Although
much equipment and even buildings have lives shorter than the
periods thought of for climate change, some urban infrastructure is
long lived. The
Page 535
cost of modifying or adapting it later is likely to be large in
comparison with the cost of the initial adaptation.
As an example think of building a new bridge over an estuary.
Ignore the possibility that the traffic to justify the bridge may
not come in 50 years. Imagine that during construction $100,000
today will buy the adaptation of an added meter of height above sea
level. Let it happen that after 50 years the sea rises and the
bridge without the added clearance needs a $5 million retrofit or
adaptation. Discounted at 6 percent per annum, the present value of
the $5 million is $271,000. If we are certain the sea will rise,
adding the meter for $100,000 makes a benefit of $271,000 minus
$100,000. In general, adaptation during construction is economical
as long as the ratio of the cost of a present adaptation divided by
the present value of the retrofit is less than the probability of
higher seas, and other superior investment opportunities are not
available. Thus, in the example above, probabilities greater than
100,000/271,000 or 0.37 would justify the added investment.
Let the justified cost be in cents warranted now for a dollar of
retrofit later. The probability that the adaptation will be needed,
how long the wait before it is needed, and the discount rate set
the justified cost, as illustrated in Figure 33.4. The mathematics
in the figure's caption shows a percentage rise in the probability
that the adaptation will be needed raises the justified cost by the
same percentage. Regardless of how long the wait or how great the
discount, raising the probability that the bridge must be adapted
by 10 percent from, say, 50 to 55 percent raises the justified cost
by 10 percent from, say, 20 to 22 cents—10 percent more
probable, 10 percent more cost today justified by this
calculation.
On the other hand, either raising the discount or lengthening
the wait by 1 percent lowers the justified cost by 1 percent times
the discount rate times the wait. The percentage rise in the
justified cost caused by a percentage fall in discount or wait is
their product: discount rate times years. Imagine lowering the
product of discount times wait 1 percent from 6 percent times 100
years to either 6 percent times 99 years or 5.94 percent times 100
years. This raises the justified cost by 1 percent times 0.06 times
100, or fully 6 percent. If the justified cost before was 20 cents,
it rises to 21.2 cents.
Figure 33.4 shows the justified costs for three combinations of
years, discount rate, and probability of need. The center row of
bars could be labeled either 50 years at 6 percent or 100 years at
3 percent. Lower discount rate, shorter wait, and higher
probability or certainty raise the warranted expenditure. Lifting
the justified cost of the present adaptation above 10 cents per
dollar retrofit takes probabilities above 0.4 plus discounts below
3 percent and waits shorter than 50 years.
The percentage change in the justified cost always equals a
percentage change in probability of need but is the discount rate
times the years of wait
Page 536
FIGURE 33.4 The justified cost of an adaptation
in cents justified now for a dollar of retrofit later.
NOTE: The
probability that the adaptation will be needed because, say, sea
level rises is shown from left to right. The front row of short
bars pertains to a wait of 100 years before the adaptation is
needed and a discount rate of 6 percent. The back row of bars
rising above 20 cents pertains to a wait of only 50 years and a
discount rate of only 3 percent. Since the justified cost is
approximately set by the product of discount rate and wait, the
middle row, for example, could have been labeled 100 at 3 percent
as well as 50 at 6 percent.
A little mathematics illustrates several points
about justified costs. Let the ratio j
be the cost of a present adaptation relative to the cost of
retrofit. It is cents per dollar in the figure. Adaptation during
construction is warranted as long as the ratio
j of the costs is less than
j´ =
P/(1 + i)n
where P is the probability of need,
i is the discount rate, and n is the years until
adaptation is needed. For commonplace discount rates, the
approximation is
log(j´) 
log(P) - (in)
The approximation explains why the justified
cost is set by the product of the discount rate and the wait. It
explains why the middle row in the figure, for example, could have
been labeled either 100 years at 3 percent or 50 years at 60
percent.
The approximation is convenient for thinking
about such relative changes or elasticities as (dj/j´)(dP/P). The elasticity of
j´ for a change in the probability
P is simply 1; for a change in (in), it is
(in).
Because the elasticity of
j´ for a change in P is 1, a 10 percent
improvement in certainty or P always raises justifiable cost
10 percent. On the other hand, the elasticity for changes in
discount times years is (in). The higher i and
n, the bigger the percentage change in the ratio j´ for a percentage change in
(in). The justifiable cost rises from left to right by the
same percentage as the probability, but it rises more between the
middle and rear rows than between the front and middle rows.
SOURCE: Figure
courtesy of Jon Liebman.
Page 537
times the percentage change in rate or wait. So for rates times
waits like 0.06 times 100, foretelling rates and waits has more
leverage than raising the probability of need.
Choosing a discount rate is clearly exactly as important as
forecasting the length of wait. In Chapter 32, the section
''Assumptions," the panel set rates of 3, 6, and 10 percent.
So in the face of this uncertainty, rational people will start
work on more adaptations than they complete. They will make more
adaptations as their certainty grows. And they will pay special
attention to how high the discount rate and how long the wait.
Partial Justifications and Multiple
Goals
Many of the ways used and proposed for adaptation to climate
change are justified only partly on the basis of climate change.
For example, farmers build irrigation systems to increase current
yields and to diminish the effects of variable weather. The
prospect of climate change provides an additional justification for
investment in irrigation. In almost all cases discussed in this
report, climate change provides only a partial justification for
particular actions or investments. For example, stricter zoning of
shorelines could serve not only to minimize the impacts of sea
level rise but also to lessen habitat destruction. Planting trees
in urban areas would provide shade and comfort if the climate
became hotter and would also make a small contribution to retaining
carbon in the biosphere. Several actions that are proposed to lower
greenhouse gas emissions, like reduction in coal usage, are
similarly proposed because they serve multiple goals.
One adaptation has the virtue of shortening the wait for
benefits: thorough adaptation to the present variability of
weather. For example, Gleick (1990) found that among five
indicators a small storage capacity relative to supply was the one
that most frequently indicated vulnerability of water systems in
the eastern United States. If more storage capacity were built to
adapt to present variability, it would also be an adaptation to a
change to a drier climate.
Thus, we must ask whether a set of partial justifications,
including climate change, adds up to a full justification. From
efficiency of water and energy use to coastal zone management, one
could argue that these are things that societies already ought to
be doing anyway. Does climate change then put certain projects over
the investment hurdle? If not, how impressive are these remedies
and what are the obstacles to them? Like suitors, solutions court
problems; the problem of climatic change is used to justify
numerous solutions. One must ask why these solutions have not yet
been accepted. Gaining acceptance may well require removing a
fundamental obstacle like cost, convenience, or ignorance rather
than merely adding another justification.
Page 538
Criteria for Using the Tools of
Government
Government can speed adaptation with many tools. One is to
provide timely information, like weather forecasts. Another is to
support fundamental research, which is primarily sponsored by
governments. To go beyond these unexceptionable actions to
regulation or investment, however, one must examine the criteria
for using government tools.
Although the most important and by far the greater number of
adaptations are made by private agents like consumers and
enterprises, governments can ensure that the legal and economic
structure encourages adaptation. Changing incomes, prices, and
environment cause more or less automatic adaptations. These include
migration of capital and labor along with technology evoked by
changing conditions. Buildings will be built above an advancing
sea, people escape unpleasant climates, and agricultural and
industrial capital leave lands that lose their advantage.
But governments can ensure that climatic impacts are translated
into signals of price and income that spur private adaptation. This
may be hard because many impacts of climate change are improperly
priced. For example, climate change will probably alter runoff. But
in the United States and most of the world, water is often not
allocated efficiently and may not be when its availability changes
(Frederick and Kneese, 1990). So governments can speed adaptation
by using such devices as water auctions that dispatch resources to
the most valuable uses as shown by the ability to pay.
Now, recur to the fallacy of conceiving a slowly changing
climate as a blow on today's world and of ignoring the inevitable
evolution during the coming decades. That is, think again of the
"dumb people scenario" and the challenge of integrating the outcome
of a changing climate with other changes that will occur during the
coming decades. During this evolution it is probably unwise to
prescribe in detail much adaptation now to smooth the transition to
climate change over the next century. Like generals building a
Maginot Line in the wrong place, we might bankrupt ourselves
building dikes against floods that never come. In addition, the
evident speed of innovation and replacement allows us to wait in
most cases until we see the whites of the enemies' eyes. Financial
markets adjust in minutes, labor moves in a few years, the economic
long run is no more than two decades, and only major technologies
like highways replacing rails or one school of thought forcing out
another take as long as climate change.
Thus, three criteria for government action to promote adaptation
can be that (1) the amount of time needed to carry out the
adaptation is so long that we must act now, (2) the action is
profitable even if climate does not change, and (3) the penalty for
waiting a decade or two is great.
Page 539
References
Ausubel, J. H. 1991. Does climate still matter? Nature
350:649–652.
Burton, I., R. W. Kates, and G. F. White. 1978. The Environment
as Hazard. New York: Oxford University Press.
Duvick, D. N. 1984. Genetic diversity in major farm crops on the
farm and in reserve. Economic Botany 38:161–178.
Economic Planning Agency. 1989. Economic Survey of Japan,
1987–1988. Tokyo: Economic Planning Agency.
Fiering, M. B., and N. C. Matalas. 1990. Decision-making under
uncertainty. In Climate Change and U.S. Water Resources, P. E.
Waggoner, ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Frederick, K. D., and A. V. Kneese. 1990. Reallocation by
markets and prices. In Climate Change and U.S. Water Resources, P.
E. Waggoner, ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Glantz, M. H., ed. 1988. Societal Responses to Regional Climate
Change: Forecasting by Analogy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Gleick, P. H. 1990. Vulnerability of water systems. In Climate
Change and U.S. Water Resources, P. E. Waggoner, ed. New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
Grübler, A. 1990. The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures:
Dynamics of Evolution and Technological Change in Transport.
Heidelberg, Germany: Physica.
Holling, C. S. 1986. The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems:
Local surprise and global change. In Sustainable Development of the
Biosphere, W. C. Clark and T. E. Munn, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ingram, H. M., H. J. Cortner, and M. K. Landy. 1990. The
political agenda. In Climate Change and U.S. Water Resources, P. E.
Waggoner, ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Kates, R. W. 1980. Climate and society: Lessons from recent
events. Weather 35(1):17–25.
Malingreau, J. P. 1987. The 1982–83 drought in Indonesia:
Assessment and monitoring. In The Societal Impacts Associated with
the 1982–83 Worldwide Climate Anomalies, M. H. Glantz, R.
Katz, and M. Krenz, eds. Boulder, Colo.: National Center for
Atmospheric Research.
May, P. J. 1985. Recovery from Catastrophes. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press.
Miller, K. A., and M. H. Glantz. 1988. Climate and economic
competitiveness: Florida freezes and the global citrus processing
industry. Climatic Change 12:135–164.
Mitchell, J. K. 1984. Hazard perception studies: Convergent
concerns and divergent approaches during the past decade. In
Environmental Perception and Behavior, T. F. Saarinen, D. Seamon,
and J. L. Sell, eds. Research Paper No. 209, Department of
Geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morrisette, P. M. 1988. The stability bias and adjustment to
climatic variability: The case of the rising level of the Great
Salt Lake. Applied Geography 8:171–198.
National Research Council. 1987. Confronting Natural Disasters.
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Page 540
Phillips, D. H., and D. Jordon. 1986. The declining role of
historical data in reservoir management and operations. In
Preprints of the Conference on Climate and Water Management, August
4–7, 1986. Boston: American Meteorological Society.
Riebsame, W. E. 1988. Adjusting water resources management to
climate change. Climatic Change 12:69–97.
Riebsame, W. E. 1990. Anthropogenic climate change and a new
paradigm of natural resources management. Professional Geographer
42:1–12.
Riebsame, W. E., S. A. Changnon, and T. R. Karl. 1991. Drought
and Natural Resources Management in the United States. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press.
Schwarz, H. E., and L. A. Dillard. 1990. Urban water. In Climate
Change and U.S. Water Resources, P. E. Waggoner, ed. New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
Shugart, H. H., M. Ya. Antonovsky, P. G. Jarvis, and A. P.
Sandford. 1986. CO2, Climatic change
and forest ecosystems: Assessing the response of global forests to
the direct effects of increasing CO2
and climatic change. In SCOPE 29, The Greenhouse Effect, Climatic
Change and Ecosystems, B. Bolin, B. R. Döös, J.
Jäger, and R. A. Warrick, eds. Chichester, United Kingdom:
John Wiley & Sons.
Statistisches Bundesamt. 1989. Wirtschaft und Statistik.
Stuttgart: Metzler-Poeschl.
Strain, B. R., and F. A. Bazzaz. 1983. Terrestrial plant
communities. In CO2 and Plants, E.
R. Lemon, ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
USSR State Committee on Statistics. Undated. Statistics on
Social Indicators and Capital Vintage Structure in Industry.
Institute for Social and Economic Statistics, Moscow. Memorandum,
courtesy of A. Grübler, Laxenburg, Austria.
Warrick, R. A. 1980. Drought in the Great Plains: A case study
of research on climate and society in the USA. In Climatic
Constraints and Human Activities, J. Ausubel and A. K. Biswas, eds.
Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Warrick, R. A., and M. J. Bowden. 1981. The changing impacts of
drought in the Great Plains. In The Great Plains: Perspectives and
Prospects, M. P. Lawson and M. E. Baker, eds. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press.
Weihe, W. H. 1979. Climate, health and disease. In Proceedings
of the World Climate Conference, World Meteorological Organization.
Geneva, Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization.
White, G. F., ed. 1974. Natural Hazards: Local, National,
Global. New York: Oxford University Press.
White, G. F. 1975. Flood hazard in the United States: A research
assessment. Monograph No. 6., Natural Hazards Center. Boulder:
University of Colorado at Boulder.
White, G. F. 1988. Global warming: Uncertainty and action.
Environment 30(6):i.
World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 1988. The World Weather
Watch. WMO Report No. 709. Geneva: World Meteorological
Organization.
Yohe, G. 1990. Uncertainty, global climate and the economic
value of information: An economic analysis of policy options,
timing and information under long term uncertainty. Paper presented
at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, New Orleans, La., February 15–20,
1990.
