ADAPTATION.

A bad word, a stigma. Still, we ought to try it out. Adaptation. Give it a chance. Adaptation. Pull it on, one limb at a time, four limbs, like new coveralls. A-dap-ta-tion.

Time to roll it back and forth on our tongue, see how it sounds in the titles of poems, movies, novels, songs, blogs. The Road Less Adapted. The Grapes of Adaptation. Adaptation On My Mind. For Whom the Bell Adapts. Citizen Adaptation. Kramer vs. Adaptation. (Doesn’t always work.)

It’s a bad word, profane, vile, heretical. Prevention is much better. Everybody loves prevention. Prevention sez it’s not too late to reverse climate change. Prevention says it’s not too late to make things like they were. Prevention means the system dwarfs the damage we’ve done to it. Prevention means we can live like modern humans live and still find harmony with our environment. Prevention means we can keep growing our cities and economies and houses and businesses and portfolios and still purchase and consume, still build and make things with the supreme virtuous objective humans have always lived for above all things: to provide for our families a wee bit better than our parents did.

Prevention means we can still spit in the river, still tilt into the wind, still casually spend our Sundays at the park just like we always have.

Better times? George Seurat, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” 1884-1886. Art Institute of Chicago.

Prevention of climate change means keeping everything we know. Prevention means looking forward to a recognizable wedding twenty years from now. Prevention means starting a business today in order to pass it to our children. Prevention means we can plant an acorn next to our house to shade our great-great grandchildren in the yard. Prevention is comfort.

But adaptation…

The water is rising. The dike is cracked; it’s leaking. We have a finger in it. Adaptation may sound like giving up — pulling our finger out, hopping into the best rowboat we can find, and waiting to ride the surf. But the dam is cracked and taking on water, and bits are falling off.

Adaptation doesn’t mean we won’t prevent climate changes that we still can prevent, but folks hello: it’s time to adapt.

We are adapting already! Over a few hills to my north the Woolsey fire is burning hot and wild and beyond control, and I can’t keep my eyes off its sunset. This sunset contains mighty oaks. This sunset contains 200-year-old fences, homes. This sunset contains Paramount Ranch, gone now except what I can see in particles in smoke over the ocean.

And look: this sunset is very, very beautiful.