GOLDSTEIN: Governments can’t stop climate change, we must adapt to it

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In the real world, attempting to engineer our climate by lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, even in the unlikely event that it succeeds, won’t prevent flooding in B.C. or countless other extreme weather events in our lifetimes.

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One reason to think it won’t succeed is that despite all the virtue signalling by politicians at the recent United Nations COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, collectively their 196 countries are failing to report (i.e. hiding) somewhere between 8.5 billion and 13.3 billion tons of emissions annually, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

At the low end, that’s more than the total annual emissions of the U.S. — the world’s second-largest emitter.

At the high end, it’s almost as much as the total annual emissions of China — the world largest emitter.

None of this is accounted for in the UN’s ostensible goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and makes anything done by Canada — responsible for 1.6% of global emissions — purely symbolic.

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Again, in the real world — as opposed to the never-ending speechifying in Glasgow — we need to take steps beyond mitigating climate change, to adapt to it.

For example, by not, in future, having 300,000 people living on a flood plain, including a reclaimed lake — which is what governments allowed to happen in B.C.

By not continuing to build uber-expensive homes along ocean coastlines, perpetually vulnerable to hurricanes and storm surges, where many of the uber-rich live. That is when they aren’t flying into never-ending UN climate gabfests on private jets lecturing the rest for us to consume less.

Sensible planning, tougher building codes, replacing aging sewer and water mains, upgrading water pumping stations, improving drainage systems, are all sensible things we can do to adapt to climate change, no matter whether caused by nature, or made more severe by human activity.

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Of course, the contracts for doing such vital infrastructure work have to be awarded by governments to competent contractors, not the lowest bidders with the best political connections.

As explained by Robert Henson in his book The Rough Guide to Climate Change: The Symptoms, The Science, The Solutions :

“What might seem like a straightforward response to climate change — adapting to it — is actually fraught with politics. There’s nothing especially novel about being prepared for what the atmosphere may bring … There are plenty of sensible steps that vulnerable nations and regions could take right now to reduce the risk of climate change trauma.

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“Just as energy efficiency makes sense for other reasons than climate protection, many forms of adaptation — such as moving inwards from coastlines — will help keep people and their property safer regardless of the extent of global warming.

“Yet there’s a tension between adaption and mitigation: to some, the former implies a disregard of the latter, as if society were giving up on trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Indeed. That is the mantra of climate change hysteria — opposed to adaptation, opposed to nuclear power (which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases), opposed to natural gas (the cleanest fossil fuel), opposed to hydro power (dams drown trees and destroy the local environment).

These are people whose dream is to return to an agrarian, pre-industrial society, where we would all be shepherds herding our sheep, after the requisite number of us are killed by the madness of attempting to use inefficient and unreliable wind and solar energy to power modern, industrialized countries like our own.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com