Adapt, blathercluckers

Last week marked the peak of what I would loosely translate from Bulgarian as “the July heat”. Interestingly, that period coincides with a religious celebration of a handful of saints, where said celebration involves abstaining from work in the field — guess why.

July is always hot around here but this time the Sun decided to be the gift that keeps on giving, showering us with 40C heat, which I may have experienced in childhood but not since then. Then, last Friday, the fever broke but not before it got me wondering as I stewed — or rather roasted since it’s dry heat in this part of the world — in the July heat. Why is there no talk about adaptation in the Great Planet-Saving Narrative?

Adaptation is what makes survival possible across species. Adaptation is how I interpret the “fittest” part of that survival quote. Adaptation is the ultimate tool of evolution — you can’t evolve if you died out because you refused to adapt. And yet this is exactly what we see: a refusal to even discuss adaptation to a changing climate because, yes, the climate is changing — as it always has.

On the personal level, adaptation involved avoiding the hottest hours of the day and focusing outdoor activities on the early mornings because it was still above 30 at 9 pm and unpleasant. So unpleasant, in fact, that even the mosquitoes disappeared. They hid, to await more livable temperatures. They, in other words, adapted. So why can’t we? There had to be a reason, maybe even a couple.

One of these, I suspect, is money. Adaptation would no doubt cost less than the massive overhaul of global energy systems and while this is a good thing for you and me, and the neighbour’s dog, it’s not good for those who stand to reap financial gains from a transition rather than adaptation, hence the gag order on adaptation.

Another is that adaptation does not invoke fear, at least not to the degree that talk about a climate emergency does. Adaptation doesn’t sound urgent, even though in some parts of the world it may very well be an urgent matter of, I don’t know, propping up anti-flood infrastructure, for instance. Adaptation also sounds boring and boredom is the enemy of the climate crusaders.

Ironically, it is exactly adaptation that the climate crusade army is pushing on all of us — adaptation not to a changing climate but to a changed energy system purported to be able to arrest the changes in the climate. This is just about the only context in which adaptation is being discussed publicly but the word itself is rarely used — unlike the word “used”. Funny thing, language.

We need to get used to lower energy consumption, we are told. We need to get used to a lower standard of living, to save the planet and the climate, although how you save the climate is beyond me. We need to get used to more expensive food and less reliable electricity, and so on and so forth.

The obvious question — why don’t we just try and get used to different weather — is carefully omitted in favour of incessant harping on about “extreme weather”, where the phrase means absolutely anything that the ones using it want it to mean. Extreme weather is what we say it is.

Here’s an example: “Inflamed by the carbon pollution spewed from burning fossils and farming livestock, the average surface air temperature hit 17.09C (62.76F) on Sunday, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940.”

The example is brought to us courtesy of The Guardian and I’m not sure I should thank Ken Mull for bringing it to my attention because I got a laughter-induced headache when I read it. In a world where 17.09 degrees Celsius can be called “hot” anything is possible. Except adaptation, that is.

Indeed, some climate activists openly and loudly condemn adaptation as an option. One would think that they have a personal beef with the idea. Meanwhile, even the IPCC and the European Union have documents on adaptation to climate change, although the IPCC makes a point of noting that adaptation won’t be enough. The EU, shockingly, doesn’t.

As I write this on July 25, it’s a balmy 23C outside after a quiet and nourishing rain during the night and most of the morning that my newly sown courgettes and beans would welcome eagerly. You see, I lost my first crop of beans and courgettes this year due to the sudden onset of the summer heat in early June. But as the summers get longer, I get a second chance to grow my own food — and I’m taking it.

I would very much like to see local authorities start thinking about devising some sort of a water reserve for the droughty periods, which occur every single summer in this part of the country. They’re not even a new thing but they may get worse.

Elsewhere, it might be a decent idea to plant some more trees instead of building ever more residential buildings that stay empty for years due to impossible real estate prices. Trees make a huge difference in the summer heat and good city planners know it and make their cities green.

Regular dam maintenance doesn’t sound half bad, either, along with better forest management, up to and including instituting scary fines for littering and implementing them — all it takes to start a wildfire is some water in a clear plastic bottle tossed on the dry July grass.

This is why activists don’t talk about adaptation. It’s a host of boring little, common sense things that do not require any cutting-edge technology or artificial intelligence to do. They also don’t require trillions in investments in stuff that is being repeatedly proven to not work well enough to replace the energy sources we already have.

Granted, there are different scales of adaptation and tech could certainly help with the larger-scale adaptation endeavours. For most of us in our everyday lives, however, it’s the small, boring stuff that’s usually enough. Stay out of the sun when it’s in scorching mode and stay in when it’s -30 and snowing heavily because, guess what, it’s winter and it has all happened before.