Week 7 - Adaptation & Mitigation

The poorest week by far.

A video supposedly about adaptation and mitigation focuses on a new build school that's been built to be zero carbon, stay cool in summer, and generate it's own power.

All very nice but how does it mitigate climate change? Yes, if it were applied to all new builds, it might just scratch the surface of the problem, but we all know that's not going to happen any time soon. Every building would cost a fortune for a start.

What would have been better would be to show an old school being retrofitted with cost efficient carbon cutting and adaptation measures. That would have been far more interesting, realistic, and on topic.

And then, to compound things, we were asked to 'browse' a 75 page document on mitigation and adaptation in, would you believe, new build houses.

ARGHHHHHH!! The UK alone has 25 million existing homes, very few of which are even close to zero carbon. They're the problem! How do we get them sorted out?

Then we get the classic "Decarbonising energy is all very well but what about..." argument in the form a video about NIMBYs. Yes, I've heard it all before, so where are the SOLUTIONS?

If we are to have any chance of keeping climate change below 2 degrees C, global carbon emissions have to level off (and fall quickly thereafter) by 2020. We need effective, cost efficient solutions now and that may mean we have to make some tough choices.

If we want things to stay the same, things are going to have to change.