Carbon emissions on the rise: a time for adaptation?

The NY Times reports that:

"Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery".

What's more:

"Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003".

Over the next few days, leaders from around the world are attending the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol, in Durban, South Africa. Other climate change conferences such as Copenhagen (2009) and Bali (2007) have had tremendous challenges in putting forward meaningful actions on mitigating climate emissions. Finding consensus on mitigating emissions is too difficult with the rising giants of India and China along with several developing countries.

Despite my cynicism, something positive may emerge from Durban. However, after working an internship with SFU for the past 6 months and learning about the many benefits of climate change adaptation, I feel more more inclined to support policies that address ways to respond and prepare for climate change impacts. I have blogged about this extensively. In short, adaptation is far more productive than climate change mitigation because people can begin to understand the potential impacts of climate on their lives and what sort of incentives are available to respond to this.

Matt Kahn at UCLA is famous for his work on the economics of climate change adaptation.  Take some of points with a grain of salt, but I think he's on to something that policymakers in the deveoped and developing world alike ought to pay attention to.

More on adaptation soon.