Adapting to climate change deserves the same prestige as cutting emissions

Cutting emissions is a global effort whose benefits are spread thinly and arrive slowly. Adaptation is local, visible and immediate: shade, drainage, cooling centres, flood defences, early warnings. Yet it is often treated as the less glamorous cousin, or as a sign of giving up.

We think that is a mistake. Whatever happens to emissions, some change is already locked in, and the people who feel it first are rarely the people who caused it. Cities with dense concrete and little shade, for example, can run several degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside, which is the urban heat island effect. Fixing that is not defeatism; it is protecting residents.

The real objection is moral hazard: spending on adaptation might become an excuse to delay cuts. We would answer with separate budgets and separate targets, so that neither can quietly substitute for the other.

What would change our mind: evidence that adaptation spending systematically reduces political pressure to cut emissions.