The climate is changing. Even if we stopped carbon emissions tomorrow, a certain amount of climate change is already locked into the system. And yet we in industrialised nations seem to have put adaptation to those changes on the back burner. Here’s what the UK Climate Change Committee concluded last summer:

The evidence of the damage from climate change has never been clearer, but the UK’s current approach to adaptation is not working. Defra needs to deliver an immediate strengthening of the Government’s programme, with an overhaul of its integration with other Government priorities such as Net Zero and nature restoration. We cannot wait another five years for only incremental improvement.

Baroness Brown, Chair of the Adaptation Committee

So climate adaptation should be a hot topic (excuse the pun)? Well, here’s something that hit me as quite stark. Every episode I publish on the Net Zero Business Podcast performs above the average, so the average gradually rises. Until last week’s one with Kit England, digging into climate adaptation. I thought as a unique insight it would perform well, but no – downloads are waaaayyyy below average – probably about 60%…

I don’t know why this is. Is the topic less sexy than ‘saving the planet’? Is it because so-called ‘lukewarmers’ say that we can simply adapt to climate impacts and don’t have to cut carbon emissions? Is it because, as Kit explains, some people equate adaptation with ‘giving up’. I simply don’t know.

What I do no, is it is not a case of climate mitigation or adaptation, we must do both. C’mon folks, it is time to take adaptation seriously.