Last May, when the weather was unbearably hot broke records across South Florida and smoke from distant wildfires in Mexico made the sky foggyRon DeSantis, Republican Governor of Florida, signed legislation removing most references to “climate change” from state law. “We are restoring sanity to our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of radical green fanatics,” he said. wrote on X.
At the time, it seemed like just another Florida story, the latest example of the culture war trumping reality. In retrospect, it was a preview of where the country was heading.
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President Donald Trump's second term has plunged the United States into a “don't talk about climate” policy. Even so terrible floods And fires unfolded across the country this year, Republicans in Congress canceled the country's only climate plan. The administration has removed the phrase “climate change” from hundreds of government web pages and rejected facts about planet warming as “brainless, fear-mongering rhetoric.” Instead of resisting, Democrats started talking less about climate change after the 2024 elections, emphasizing “cheap energy” instead.
Even if climate change talk is politically radioactive, adapting to its impacts is no longer optional. Florida tops some lists for the state most at risk from climate change, facing a combination of heat, drought, fires, floods and hurricanes. Miami Beach and the cities of the Florida Keys were raising your roads as the sea begins to rise. DeSantis committed over 1 billion dollars in Resilient Florida, a grant program that helps local governments address some of these problems.
You don't have to mention climate change to start adapting to it, a phenomenon that's happening across the country right now. PG&E is bury power lines underground to avoid starting fires in California's drying forests in the name of “wildfire safety.” After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, the area began buying houses which have repeatedly flooded and displaced residents, turning their former homes into open space to absorb floodwaters.
“There's been a dramatic increase in the number of people realizing that whether it's a flood, a drought, a fire, the impact of a fire on air quality — take your example — disasters are outpacing us,” said Catherine Mah, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami.
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Since at least the 1980s, public debate about climate change has revolved around attempts to bring the world's carbon dioxide emissions under control. But as time goes on and emissions continue to rise, we increasingly have to live with the consequences of an overheating planet. United Nations report Last week it emerged that the world will soon exceed its goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), with current policies likely to result in warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. This is a slight improvement on previous estimates, but it still means the planet will be unrecognizable.
“We have created a world in which many climate impacts are now locked in,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior director of climate and energy policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Because we didn't act fast enough, it's not just about mitigation anymore. We have to adapt.”
Bill Gates, who has long funded efforts to transition to clean energy, recently wrote an essay that argues that climate advocates have spent too much time and effort on cutting emissions and not enough on programs that help people remain resilient in the face of increasingly dangerous weather.
“Unfortunately, the prospect of the end of the world is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on short-term emissions targets and diverting resources away from the most effective things we need to do to improve life in a warming world,” Gates wrote.
The question of how to finance the efforts of low-income countries to adapt to this new, unpredictable environment has become central problem to this year's global climate talks in Belem, Brazil, which begin on November 10. “This is a responsibility that richer countries, high-emitting countries, have shied away from for a long time,” Cleetus said. Another recent one UN report found that developing countries will need at least $310 billion a year over the next 10 years to prepare for the impacts of climate change. In 2023, richer countries provided just $26 billion.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cut foreign aid, stripping development funding from poorer countries while undermining its own ability to respond to natural disasters at home. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spending cuts hampered forecasters' ability to predict what will happenwhile the reduced FEMA forced local authorities to stand up for themselves. USA doesn't send anything high level delegates to the Belém talks, marking the first time the country will remain unrepresented at the annual UN climate conference.
“I have never seen an administration so deliberately undermine the country’s ability to prepare and cope with challenges like these,” said Suzanne Moser, a sociologist who is considered one of the leading experts on climate change adaptation.
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Billionaires like Gates are filling that gap. Mackenzie Scott, another influential philanthropist, recently… donated $60 million to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy to help with disaster preparedness and recovery.
Experts said a new emphasis on adapting to a changing climate is needed, but they said Gates, like many before him, was unnecessarily pitting the need to adapt against the need to cut emissions when both things could happen at the same time.
“Adaptation may ultimately fail if climate change remains unchecked,” Moser said. Today the world saw about 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 F) of additional warming since pre-industrial times, but Gates notes it could reach 3 degrees C (5.4 F) by the end of the century.
“A 3-degree world is not a world in which adaptation can ensure well-being and health,” Moser said. “It’s simple: people live in ruins and try to survive.”
There is a growing view among environmentalists that discussions about how to adapt to climate change are a distraction from the main goal of reducing planet-warming emissions, known as mitigation. Sometimes it's perceived as a form of refusal. But research repeatedly shown that talk of adaptation does not necessarily reduce public support for mitigation efforts. In any case, adaptation problems are a high price raising roads in low-lying coastal areas, or difficulties community resettlement outside hazardous areas – emphasize the need to reduce emissions. “Once you start adapting and see how difficult it is, mitigation becomes a cakewalk,” Moser said.
If Florida is any indication, the two may go hand in hand. Yoka Arditi-Rocha, CEO of the CLEO Institute, an education and climate advocacy nonprofit in Florida, says the state has made a lot of progress that isn't often discussed. In fact, this is one of the largest electric vehicle markets in the country, as well as directly upstairs for installation utility scale solar energy And solar panel on the roof.
Arditi-Rocha hopes Florida can show the rest of the country that climate action can still move forward, even if the term itself remains politically taboo. Getting specific help, she said: Talking about how cities need more shade trees or how they need to be prepared for hurricanes and heat is just practical. Again, the same thing happens with reducing carbon emissions.
“We have to close the overflowing bathtub,” Arditi-Rocha said. “We can’t clean the floor forever.”
