Special Series
Climate Fairness
In a Series
Tribes and Climate Adaptation
Last week, when I wrote that the costs of doing nothing about climate change outstrip the costs of fixing the problem, one person wrote asking for hard numbers. How do we know for certain which is more expensive? Maybe it will be cheaper to abandon ship, so to speak: move everyone (and everything) out of flood-prone areas and forget about reducing emissions.
Fair enough, I suppose. It would be interesting to see someone crunch those numbers. Plus, whether we reduce our emissions or not, we'll likely need to undertake some expense for "adaptation" -- the costs of managing the climate impacts that are already unavoidable.
More precisely though, it's a fair enough question only for those of us who don't have our livelihoods and heritage bound up in the Northwest's rivers and lowlands. Not everyone really has the option of leaving. Consider the tribes.
