Now I live in a county where "Climate Protection" is part of the name of both a non-profit organization and a government agency, so this particular term bears some discussion. Are we talking about protecting the climate from us, or ourselves from the climate?
During a staff meeting this morning, I had an epiphany on this question. The contemporary discussion of response to climate change revolves on two separate but related courses of action: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means working to halt or reduce the causes of climate change. Adaptation recognizes some inevitability in climate change and seeks to stave off the worst of the consequences.
So now I think we can frame climate protection thus: mitigation is protecting the climate from us, while adaptation is about protecting us from the climate.
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