“No, there is absolutely nothing offered to help mitigate the costs to the middle class. Plus, what will the government do with the windfall except give it to third world dictators as a bribe to not develop their resources.”
I agree with you. Having that is what is meant by “adapting”.
To help adapt to climate change means developing technologies and products with which human life would be less adversely affected in general, and mitigating means developing ways to offset or makeup for any adverse impacts that adapatations alone cannot avoid. Many of the things that could be done to improve human adaptation to “warming” would also prove their worth if adverse affects turned out to be from “cooling”. As I said most of that would be done in and come from the private sector, though “mitigation” efforts in particular would come under the same bedgetary items that spending for “natural disasters” falls under. But all of it, adapting and mitigating would collectively cost a mazzive amount less to the economy than chasing CO2.
Unfortunately, we are I’ll prepared for any change. We rely on technology for everything which requires petroleum energy to make it work. For that reason, we are extremely vulnerable. Will we adapt? Definitely. But it will be tough and it will be dramatic. People will suffer and people will die.