USA: Welcome to the politics of climate change: adapt and avert

While thousands converged on Washington to rally for climate change, the U.S. government was building a levee to protect the National Mall against Katrina-like flooding. Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to adapt while also averting total disaster, writes Mark Hertsgaard for the Daily Beast.

Hertsgaard, who reports on the some 35,000 demonstrators who gathered in Washington, DC (USA) on Sunday for the largest climate change rally in history, explains both climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, and the need for both. He describes recent measures, like those taken in Washington, D.C. that will help provide the US Federal Triangle with 185-year flood protection - the 17th Street Closure, that can help mitigate against flood risk and risk associated with an increase in extreme weather events.

He writes, the mantra invoked by experts is that climate policy must aim to “avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable.”