Floods and wildfires across Europe have stimulated demands for greater focus on adaptation to climate change. Measures such as flood protection barriers are considered a part of adaptation to climate change, whereas emission reduction is typically part of mitigation.

Adaptation sounds like a counsel of despair, giving up the fight and accepting that the cause is lost, making the best of collective failure.

For the planet as a whole, mitigation works only if most of the world’s 200-plus countries – especially the large emitters – are successful in their efforts.

However, climate scientists continue to warn that this is unlikely to happen.

Current policies are inadequate to avert the longer-term threat and they advise that extreme weather events will become more frequent and more disruptive.

This creates a dilemma for small countries whose emissions are immaterial in a planetary context.

Ireland is responsible, at the mid range of estimates, for about one-tenth of 1% of worldwide emissions, one tonne of carbon in a thousand, which means that success on a national level makes a trivial contribution if others do too little.

Only if every country had its own atmosphere, each a lonely planet orbiting the sun in isolation, would the incentives be aligned: saving yourself and saving civilisation would coincide.

If the other planets do nothing, it is their own problem. Equivalently, there is no point in a shared planet unilaterally cutting emissions at great cost if every tonne saved can be offset by the failures of those emitting the remaining 999 tonnes.

The evidence that worldwide emission reduction is inadequate has been accumulating for decades and is confirmed in the consistent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an initiative of the United Nations.

Recent geopolitical developments have made the situation worse and an exclusive focus on emission reduction makes less sense for a small country than it might have done in the early years of the IPCC’s regular reporting almost 40 years ago.

Over that long period, the core message from the IPCC has been refined, but not altered, on the two crucial conclusions:

Opinions differ as to when the tipping point into irreversible climate change might arrive – some fear that point has already been reached, others say that it is not too late for effective mitigation.

But the extreme weather events of 2026 are likely a pattern to be repeated in future years and have strengthened the demands for a switch in policy away from mitigation towards adaptation.

For Ireland, given its tiny contribution to global emissions, the attractions of an adaptation focus are obvious and offer a hedge against the possible failure of European Union efforts to inspire imitation in other countries, most notably the US.

The US is responsible for roughly twice Europe’s per-capita emissions. The EU has made more of an effort, as has former member the United Kingdom, but the US has withdrawn from international climate agreements and the current administration contains several climate change deniers.

The midterm elections, due in November, will hinge, in part, around public alarm at the rise in the cost of automotive fuel.

Correcting for the exchange rate and the US definition of a gallon, the rise in retail price to $4 per US gallon corresponds to just under €1 per litre.

The price in Ireland, recently around €1.80, is a little lower than the retail price in some continental EU countries and higher than in others. The principal reason is tax. The US is federal and consumer taxes vary across the country, but the average tax imposition is a mark-up of about 20%, versus 100% or thereabouts in many EU countries.

Automotive fuel in Europe is roughly double what it would be in the absence of retail taxes.

Drill baby, drill

The Trump administration has also begun to hinder incentives to the development of renewable electricity generation and preaches: “drill baby, drill.”

Even in Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has encouraged a relaxation of the commitment to mitigation measures, including in Ireland where indirect taxes on automotive fuels were actually reduced. The reductions will necessarily increase emissions at the margin, but were denounced as inadequate by opposition politicians and Government backbenchers.

The Irish Government, through the Environmental Protection Agency, has conceded that the ambitious mitigation targets announced in the Climate Action Plan for 2030 will not be realised and have accepted that the sceptics were correct when the targets were first announced, potentially triggering penalties under the EU’s Effort Sharing Directive.

A superior policy position may be to avoid declaring implausible targets and, thus, unfunded contingent liabilities and hedging the nation’s bets through spending on adaptation measures.