ABSTRACT
We can adapt to climate change and limit the harm, or we can fail to adapt and risk much more severe consequences. How we respond to this challenge will shape the future in important ways.
The climate is already hazardous; indeed it always has been so. Variations and extremes of climate disrupt production of food and supplies of water, reduce incomes, damage homes and property, impact health and even take lives. Humans, in an unintended revenge, are getting back at the climate by adding to heat-trapping gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that are changing the climate. But the changes are amplifying the hazards. And we cannot in short order stop this. The physical and social processes of climate change have a momentum that will continue for decades and well beyond.
