Responding to Global Warming: Adaptation and Transformational Change

Abstract

The inadequacy of global efforts to reduce emissions of gases that accumulate in the atmosphere and result in global warming has led to greater attention to coping with a warmer world. While the capacity to adjust in various ways to higher global average temperatures might imply less urgency to reducing emissions, adaptation is also costly. Thus, questions of equity and responsibility arise. As a global problem, climate change faces the challenges of formulating and implementing legal, ethical, and normative obligations. The system of sovereign states assumes that governments will attend first to their own interests. If economic growth requires burning more than a country