As of late, The Economist has been running polls under the common title of “What the World Thinks.” One of the current polls is about the most reasonable response to climate change. I decided to try my luck with it. “Should the world pay more attention to adapting to climate change than to efforts to mitigate it?” is the question. A good one, too. The answers on offer range from “Not at All” to “Definitely.” In the range of seven possible answers, “Neutral” is in the middle. The voting goes by country, and so I voted for Croatia. My answer was “Definitely,” as mitigation has become nothing but a pipedream. To my surprise, this is the winning answer to the poll with thirty percent of responses at the moment. “Not at All” is far behind with only fifteen percent. Predictably, there is almost no-one in the middle, which commands no more than six percent of responses. In short, adaptation is the answer. Good luck to us all!

Addendum I (January 10, 2012)

Today is the last day of the poll. Some nine-hundred people have voted. However, the results have not changed almost at all. “Definitely” still commands thirty percent of the vote, while “Not at All” has dropped to fourteen percent. As before, “Neutral” wins because of the bimodal distribution that characterizes the poll. Anyhow, adaptation is the answer for true.

Addendum II (April 10, 2020)

Remarkably, the poll in question did not bother with explanations. Neither did I in this short description of its results. In particular, why is adaptation preferable to mitigation of climate change? Well, the answer is straightforward: the human species is not capable of mitigation worthy of mention. Although adaptation is bound to decimate the human population, it is the only option available to the species at this stage of its evolution. Adapt or perish, that is. In retrospect, it is interesting that the mighty newspaper failed to come up with any explanation of the poll’s outcome. Chances are that the journalists behind it would agree with me, as would many of those who had voted like I did, but that they were weary of spelling it out for all to see. It would lead to endless polemic about all sorts of things, including good old ethics. At any rate, I am glad to round off this story as bluntly as possible. But I must apologize for the delay of nearly a decade, as well.

Addendum III (December 19, 2023)

Having come across this piece and its previous addenda entirely by chance, I searched the World Wide Web for climate change adaptation. And I immediately came across a Wikipedia page dedicated to this subject.[1] Amazingly, it is by far the longest page of this ilk I have ever visited. It starts by saying that climate change adaptation is the process of adjusting to the effects of climate change, which is right on the money, but it continues into many a chapter: Understanding the Need, Options by Type of Action, Options by Type of Impact, Costs and Finance, Challenges, Planning and Monitoring of Implementation, and History. There are no less than a hundred and sixty-nine items in the References, as well. To my disappointment, though, there is hardly any mention of the most likely number of humans that could survive adaptation. For all its strengths, Wikipedia is not likely to dabble into such unsavory issues. Alas, the number of humans that could possibly survive climate change adaptation cannot be large enough to appeal to anyone around the globe! In rough numbers, climate change is likely to reduce the human population to one-thousandth of its current size. From so many billions to as many millions, that is. Of course, not even Wikipedia can offer such catastrophic views of the future.

Footnote

1. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_adaptation (accessed on December 19, 2023).