The Adaptation Conversation

Climate change and its impacts cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage each year. As the scale of losses increases, so too will the number of legal cases apportioning blame to those most responsible. There have already been over one thousand litigation cases related to climate change, a number that is expected to rise dramatically as climate change continues, and legislation and regulations increase. However, there is another factor driving the number of legal cases: advances in climate science and the tools to interpret it. When it comes to litigation, it is important to be able to identify some sort of loss, and also attribute that loss to the actions, or non-actions, of a legal entity. In the past, it has been difficult to apportion blame for climate change impacts to individual companies or governments. It has also been difficult to argue that their failure to act to build resilience to climate change constitutes negligence that has led to a specific loss. However, as the science of climate chang