Mounting evidence of the reality of climate change has shifted public debate away from arguments over whether climate change will happen and steered it towards discussions of how best to respond to it. Governments across the world are working to determine the most appropriate planning scale to mitigate the degree of climate change and to adapt to its inevitable impacts. Because of the time lag of even the most ambitious mitigation attempts, a continued rise in global average temperatures and some local climate impacts are inevitable. We must simultaneously work to limit these effects while adapting to those most likely to occur.
In order to freeze the global temperature rise at two degrees, a level identified by global scientists, economists, and corporate leaders as that which is necessary to avoid the most extreme catastrophes, the nations of the world will need to reduce carbon output by sixty to eighty percent below 1990 levels by 2050 (IPCC, Stern, USCAP). Nationally, we need to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases by thirty-three percent below 1990 levels by 2030 in order to meet the necessary targets for 2050, but we’re currently emitting twenty-five percent more than we were seventeen years ago (United States Energy Information Association, 2007). Current trends are working dramatically against these goals, but regional planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation presents an opportunity to achieve the scale of action potentially most effective to reverse these trends.