Core 2 • Section 2.3
Responding to Global Climate Change
Comparing mitigation, adaptation and resilience—and asking who decides, who pays and who benefits.
Possibilities and power over the decision-making process
Possibilities, priorities and power
Mitigation reduces causes; adaptation manages impacts; resilience strengthens the capacity to cope and recover.
No single response is sufficient. Build a portfolio and test it against effectiveness, speed, cost, feasibility, fairness and unintended consequences. Power determines which risks are prioritized and whose knowledge counts.
Response ranking
Select six actions. Rank each for effectiveness, urgency and fairness, then assemble a balanced short-, medium- and long-term portfolio.
Exposure and vulnerability disparities
Location, wealth, age, gender, education and risk perception shape adaptive capacity.
Two groups exposed to the same hazard may experience very different outcomes. Separate exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, and avoid treating national averages as complete explanations.
Contrasting vulnerability
Compare Inuit communities, Haiti, Thailand and the USA. For each, identify the principal exposure, groups most at risk, available resources and limits to adaptation.
Adaptation and mitigation strategies
Policy can regulate, price, invest, inform, protect and transform.
Examples include renewable energy, efficiency standards, public transport, coastal protection, climate-smart agriculture, heat plans and ecosystem restoration. Evaluate maladaptation: an action that transfers risk, locks in emissions or disadvantages vulnerable groups.
Policy audit
- Classify each strategy as mitigation, adaptation or both.
- Identify scale and responsible actor.
- Assess cost, effectiveness and distributional impacts.
- Flag possible maladaptation.
Geopolitical efforts and climate negotiations
UNFCCC negotiations balance ambition, national interests, equity and differentiated responsibility.
The Paris Agreement uses nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Negotiations remain shaped by historical emissions, development needs, climate finance, loss and damage, and the gap between pledges and implementation.
Climate-negotiation lab
Represent contrasting states and negotiate emissions cuts, adaptation finance and loss-and-damage support. Record each compromise and explain the power relationship behind it.
Carbon trading and offsetting
Pricing carbon can shift incentives, but credibility depends on design and verification.
Understand carbon taxes, cap-and-trade and offsets. Audit claims for additionality, permanence, leakage, double counting and justice. A cheap tonne of carbon is not automatically an effective or fair one.
Carbon-market audit
Choose an offset claim and decide whether the reduction is additional, measurable, permanent and uniquely counted. Conclude whether it substitutes for direct emissions cuts.
Geoengineering and carbon removal
Carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification involve very different risks, timescales and governance challenges.
Compare afforestation, direct air capture and enhanced weathering with proposals to reflect sunlight. Consider scale, cost, reversibility, termination shock, moral hazard and who has authority to deploy a planetary intervention.
Geoengineering decision conference
Assign scientists, governments, vulnerable states, businesses and civil society. Decide whether to research, test or deploy one proposal—and write safeguards for your decision.
Companies and civil society
Corporate supply chains, NGOs, social movements and consumers can pressure or accelerate change.
Assess corporate strategies using scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and watch for greenwashing. Civil-society actors influence agendas through evidence, litigation, campaigning, protest and local action—but have unequal access to power.
Actor-power map
Map government, business, scientists, NGOs, communities and young people by influence and interest. Add arrows showing alliances, pressure and conflict.
Sweden and Fridays for Future
A national climate-policy case alongside a youth-led transnational movement.
Evaluate Sweden’s carbon pricing, energy mix, transport transition and consumption footprint. Then assess how Fridays for Future changed discourse, participation and political pressure—distinguishing visibility from measurable policy impact.
Effectiveness–fairness matrix
Place six Swedish policies or civil-society actions on a two-axis matrix. Defend which response is most practical, most urgent and most transformative.