Finding Higher Ground Adaptation in the Age of Warming

While much of the climate conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, the reality is that even if we cut emissions to zero tomorrow, we'd still have to deal with the climate change we have already put in motion. InFinding Higher Ground, Amy Seidl is taking the uniquely positive--yet realistic--position that we can adapt and persist despite the inevitable warming. Through her research, Seidl brings us emerging stories of adaptation from both the natural world and human communities. She begins by offering examples of how ecosystems and non-human life (including plants, insects, fish, birds, and mammals) are already "piloting persistence" by adapting both on the behavioral level and the genetic level in response to changes in local environments (plants in drought conditions respond to a shorter growing season by flowering and setting their seeds earlier,while mammals take advantage of the advanced food supply by mating and birthing correspondingly). She discusses how, through biomimicry, we can learn from these adaptations, adding to our own capacity for resilience. Issues of mass migration, systemic changes in agriculture, water storage and usage, and distribution of alternative energy are all explored, sometimes with historic precedents illustrating the point that we've survived times of warming before. In looking at climate change as an opportunity for cultural evolution, Seidl's perspective flies in the face of prevailing fatalism and offers a refreshing call to evolve.

Amy Seidl is an ecologist, writer, and teacher. She is the author of Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World. Amy teaches at the University of Vermont and lives near Burlington with her husband and their children in a solar-powered home.