Limiting
Future Climate Change: Mitigation
The human response to global climate change and
climate variability can be characterized in two ways:
adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation involves developing
ways to protect people and places by reducing their
vulnerability to climate impacts. Examples of adaptation
include building seawalls or relocating buildings
to higher ground to protect communities against increased
flooding due to storms. Mitigation involves attempts
to slow the process of global climate change by lowering
the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Examples include such mechanisms as planting trees
that absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store
it in the soil or in their trunks and roots.
In this section, we examine why it is useful to
focus on mitigation as well as adaptation and on
actions that individuals and households can take
to reduce their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Adaptation is addressed in the section titled “Preparing
for a Different Future: Adaptation”
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- Why is Mitigation Important?
- What can individuals
in the New York metropolitan region do to slow
down climate change?
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