Christopher Callahan

Sustainable economic development and resilience to climate change impacts require human adaptation to a warming climate. It is possible that rising costs of climate change will provide incentives to increase adaptation actions in the future. This Perspective argues, by contrast, that adaptation to the costs of global warming is likely to be ineffective. Empirical evidence suggests that current adaptations are generally limited, and climate change is likely to undermine adaptive capacity, making intensification of the costs of warming as likely as adaptation to them. Climate adaptation will require difficult political action and is not an inevitable consequence of climate damages.