The rich world is wrong to think that climate impacts in poor countries don’t matter

Jem bendell, a British academic, is an advocate of what he calls “deep adaptation”. The world, he believes, should prepare for “near-term societal collapse”. He urges not only “resilience”, climate-speak for equipping people to withstand climate change, but also “relinquishment”, by which he means abandoning “assets, behaviours and beliefs” that it will be futile to try to retain, such as living near the coast or expecting to maintain, or attain, a rich-world lifestyle. Politicians and the public are not taking this prescription seriously, he argues, not because it is excessive, but because they are not psychologically prepared to consider it.