With a heat wave breaking temperature records in the American northwest and west coast — a wave caused aby a so-called heat dome — climate change has dominated the public discourse in recent days. The current U.S. administration has made high-profile efforts on this front (in stark contrast to its predecessor) and the corporate world, as well, has seen in recent months a spate of high-level decisions aimed at curbing carbon emissions.
Mitigation of the change itself, then, is the order of the day, it seems. But current science suggests that the time effects of mitigation may be hard to predict, which means we may be in for — put simply — hotter temperatures than at any time in recorded history. To find out what our (willing or unwilling) adaptation to climate change might look like, we spoke with Matthew Kahn. Kahn is the provost professor of economics at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of Adapting to Climate Change, out in March from Yale University Press.