Adaptation and Mitigation amid the Consequences of Failure

• Author: Paul Cox,Stan Cox
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12345
• Published date: 01 May 2020

Part I

The Major Challenges: Climate Change

and Energy Descent

The rst section deals with the overall situation faced by humanity from the combination

of climate change and energy descent.

Climate change is an unprecedented challenge that is disrupting the material systems on

which modern societies depend. Rising sea levels, hurricanes, disease vectors, droughts, forest

res, and ocean acidication spell disaster for a large portion of the world’s population. They

will interfere with crop production, forestry, shing, transportation, water supply, mosquito

abatement, electricity production, healthcare, and many other essential services. But national

leaders have avoided either mitigation (cuts in emissions) or adaptation (projects to deal with

the consequences) in a meaningful way. They have been crafting diplomatic language to delay

a serious response.

In addition to the climate crisis , we are also suffering a second global problem: the decline

of net energy to power industry and agriculture. (Net energy is the energy that remains after

energy is used to extract and transmit energy.) A decline in net energy will restrict the ability

of nations to resolve problems that were previously manageable. Even adaptation to climate

change will be impeded by lack of net energy.

Thus far, the problem of global warming has been acknowledged, but the challenges

posed by a decline in net energy have been ignored. Even most advocates of “green energy”

have yet to take seriously the problem that sources of renewable energy will not serve as a

full substitute for fossil fuels. A fully solar-powered economy will necessarily be much smaller

than a fossil-fuel economy. This is the realization that stands in the way of recognizing the

severity of the permanent energy crisis we now face. But the longer we hold on to the habits

of a high-energy economy, the harsher will be the consequences when change is imposed by

the limits of nature.

Adaptation and Mitigation amid the

Consequences of Failure

By Paul Cox* and Stan Cox†

abStraCt. Societies once could choose between changing direction or

dealing with climatic disaster; now it is necessary to do both at once.

The best-laid plans for mitigation would be hard enough to fulfill in

a stable climate, but they will be vastly harder in the climate chaos

ahead. If simultaneous mitigation and adaptation are still achievable,

such a difficult balance cannot also take on the burden of supporting

unrestrained economic growth. The failing efforts so far have been

dominated by a search for synergistic ways to mitigate, adapt, and

grow economies at the same time, while wishing away the predictable

trade-offs between these goals. Wealthy polluting countries have

enforced this optimistic spirit in international climate debates, in

part to counter the language of loss and damage, which they have

seen as a direct challenge. Key to their effort has been a reframing

of adaptation that flips the focus from the vulnerability of exposed

populations to their resilience. However, the reality of implementing

plans for resilience is running into problems, and those populations

are instead taking up the banner of climate justice. Debt- and disaster-

plagued Puerto Rico illustrates the failure of both adaptation and

mitigation through growth and the promise of climate justice as a

means to articulate other forms of balance.

Introduction

In October 2018, a year and a month after Puerto Rico lay devastated

in the tracks of Hurricane Maria, and just two months after electricity

was fully restored, the territorial Senate declared the island’s will to

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 3 (May, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12345

© 2020 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Anthropologist and freelance writer on climate and disaster. He is co-author, with his

father Stan, of How the World Breaks: Life in Catastrophe’s Path, from the Caribbean to

Siberia (New Press 2016). Email: paul@tpaulcox.com

†Stan Cox is a research fellow in ecosphere studies at The Land Institute in Salina,

Kansas. His most recent book is The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate

Emergency While We Still Can (City Lights 2020). Email: cox@landinstitute.org

654 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

decarbonize. The Energy Public Policy Act would require Puerto Rico

to transition to 40 percent renewable energy within seven years, elim-

inate coal power outright within 10 years, and use nothing but renew-

able energy by 2050 (PREB 2019). Signed into law the following April,

it was an extraordinary statement of commitment to climate change

mitigation, come what may, from a highly vulnerable place. This was

Puerto Rico, which had just suffered the worst storm in its recorded

history, with uncounted thousands of deaths and $90 billion in eco-

nomic wreckage (Milken Institute 2019; National Hurricane Center

2018). It was a territory with more than $100 billion of public debt,

subjugated to a federally appointed austerity board. Anthropogenic

climate change had already doubled or tripled the chance of more

Maria-scale disasters in each coming year (Keellings and Hernández

Ayala 2019). Every resident knew that the president who controlled

their fate was openly contemptuous of them and would be loath to

provide the slightest federal assistance. This wounded and vulnera-

ble island was responsible for only 0.38 percent of U.S. fossil-carbon

emissions (US-EIA 2019). Nevertheless, with the Energy Public Policy

Act, Puerto Rico became a national leader in the ambition to end the

use of fossil fuels for generating power.

Puerto Rico’s Act is part of a trend that spans the planet: some of

the most vulnerable countries and territories are declaring some of the

most drastic actions in the interest of mitigation. To say that their ac-

tions are inspiring (or shaming) the rest of the world is not to say that

they are a solution. After all, their sacrifices alone are not going to stop

the changes that are threatening their destruction. The storms are only

going to worsen. How will Puerto Rico’s transitioning power system

hold up if disaster begins to strike repeatedly—then regularly? What if

the island can expect no help at all in future disasters, not just because

of an antagonistic federal administration, but because other parts of

the United States are getting hit just as hard and federal emergency

funds are stripped to the bone? How much stress can the island’s am-

bitious green plans handle? For that matter, how much climate chaos

can a national Green New Deal handle, or a global course of action?

Societies once could choose between changing direction or facing

catastrophe; now it is necessary to do both at once. Future success

will come amid the consequences of past and present failure, or not