SingaporeAs diplomats and negotiators from around the world prepare to gather in Glasgow, Scotland, in November for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, governments and industries are getting more serious about reducing carbon emissions and decarbonizing key sectors of the global economy. But even if mitigation measures are deployed immediately—from massive investments in solar and nuclear power to radical geoengineering projects such as injecting sulfur dioxide particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight—our climate will not snap back to what it was a century ago.
Whatever the next normal is, it will not adapt to us—we will have to adapt to it.
Throughout history, animal species have had one common means of adaptation: to move. We humans have a fight or