How can Technology help prevent climate change?

Technologies for adaptation
In many cases people will adapt to climate change simply by changing their behaviour
– by moving to a different location say, or by changing their occupation. But often they will employ different forms of technology, whether “hard” forms, such as new irrigation systems or drought-resistant seeds, or “soft” technologies, such as insurance schemes or crop rotation patterns. Or they could use a combination of hard and soft, as with early warning systems that combine hard measuring devices with soft knowledge and skills that can raise awareness and stimulate appropriate action.
Many of these technologies are already available and widely used. The global climate system has always confronted human societies with extreme weather events and in many respects future climate change will simply exacerbate these events, altering their scale, duration or intensity. Thus it should be possible to adapt to some extent by modifying or extending existing technologies. These may date back hundreds of years. Local communities have, for example, used traditional technologies to cope with regular flooding by building houses on stilts, and many communities continue to do so, even if they use more modern materials such as concrete pillars or corrugated iron roofs. Other technologies might be considered “modern”, dating from the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century. Farmers have taken advantage of technological advances to cope better with arid environments, introducing new crop hybrids and making better use of scarce water, as with systems of drip irrigation. Nowadays human societies can also take advantage of “high” technologies such as earth observation systems that can provide more accurate weather forecasts, or crops that are based on genetically modified organisms. Finally too, people can