Coping with Climate Change

Question 1

Approaches to coping with climate changes caused by global warming can be divided into what two categories?

Answer 1

Mitigation strategies

Adaptation strategies

Question 2

What are mitigation strategies?

Answer 2

Involves taking action to reduce how much climate change occurs, e.g reducing emissions may help to slow the temperature increase, so less ice may melt and sea level would rise less.

Question 3

What are adaptation strategies?

Answer 3

Involve taking action to reduce the impacts that the changes are having, e.g sea levels are rising so defences could be built to protect vulnerable settlements.

Question 4

Give some examples of some mitigation strategies.

Answer 4

Carbon tax
Changing the energy mix
Modified agricultural practises
Emission cutting technologies
Energy conservation 
Waste strategies
Tree planting 
Carbon offsetting

Question 5

What is carbon offsetting?

Answer 5

A mitigation strategy where individuals and companies can calculate the amount of CO2 their activities are producing then offset them by paying for activities that take up and equal amount of CO2 e.g tree planting.

Question 6

What is carbon tax?

Answer 6

Taxing companies or people who produce CO2. Increasing costs discourages overconsumption of energy.

Question 7

What is the kyoto protocol?

Answer 7

An international agreement between more than 180 countries to monitor and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The countries were divided into two groups- developed and developing.
Developed agreed to cut emissions by 5%.
Developing only needed to monitor and report.

Question 8

What is carbon footprint?

Answer 8

Amount of greenhouse gases a person produces.