Lecture #6: Innovative solutions for climate change mitigation
Dear Students,there are three fundamental ways to respond to climate change:
- Option 1: To do nothing! We can choose to keep our “business as usual” model and wait and see what happens next. At any future stage, the decision can always be taken to adapt or mitigate.
- Option 2: To accept it! We can choose to adapt. Adaptation is the process of adjustment in response to actual or expected impacts of climate change.
- Option 3: To fight it! We can choose to mitigate, which is any human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.
If I could stress a key message from our discussion, it would be that in order to foster a transition from "where we are" to "where we would like to be", is important to have:
- Baseline assumptions
- Defined stabilization level
- Speed of stabilization
- Burden-sharing regime
- Supporting mechanisms
As mentioned during the lecture, I would like to recommend reading the chapter "Do Artifacts Have Politics?"
Reference note: Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 19-39.
That's all folks! See you all on our next class.
Alessandro
(Course Assistant)