In this course, we're going to look at the ways in which we respond to climate change. Our responses can take a lot of different forms, but generally, fall into two categories. One, actions aimed at minimizing the amount of climate change, our actions cause, and, or two, actions aimed at making impacts less bad, or perhaps even taking advantage of new climate conditions. This division between the two types of responses, is actually really important for the module. We're going to talk about this high level view of responding to climate change in Module 1. Then in Module 2, we're going to talk about that first category of responses, minimizing the amount of climate change that occurs. Module 3, will then shift to preparing for impacts, which we call adaptation, in the hopes of making those impacts less disruptive, or less damaging. At the conclusion of the course lectures, you'll be asked to put together an infographic, that explains one of these climate response actions. It doesn't have to be an artistic masterpiece, but I'm hoping that you can choose an action that interests you, and try to pull together supporting evidence, that would make that action compelling, to someone who might not know as much as you do about climate responses. One note to keep in mind, as we progress through this course. I'll make a number of references to policy, as one of the important ways that we can manage, and respond to climate change. Now, policy, can refer to a lot of things. In its most formal sense, it refers to laws, and rules that might be passed by a legislative body, like Congress, or developed by a state, or Federal agency. But policy can also refer to programs, that a city, state, or county might have. Something even like, a rebate, for buying a fuel efficient car, could be considered a policy response. In a more informal sense, policy can refer to norms, or behaviors typically, at an institutional level. For example, if it's customary for state agencies, to work together to deal with land, or water use decisions, that collaboration is part of the policy process, and typically, we usually think of collaboration as making for better decisions. Removing barriers to collaboration coordination, might be a policy response, even though there's no official law, or program that's really being created. While this definition for policy is not the most rigorous definition, I'm hoping these examples in this discussion give you a sense of its broad application, and will help guide you, when I mentioned things like climate policy. With that, let's get to some more content. Please stick with us, and tune into the next video, where we talk about the two categories of climate responses, mitigation, and adaptation. Thanks for your attention, and hopefully see you soon.
