Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Warming

by Amy Seidl

While much of the global warming conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, the reality is that even if we were to immediately cease emissions, we would still face climate change into the next millennium. In Finding Higher Ground, Amy Seidl takes the uniquely positive—yet realistic—position that humans and animals can adapt and persist despite these changes. Drawing on an emerging body of scientific research, Seidl brings us stories of adaptation from the natural world and from human communities. She offers examples of how plants, insects, birds, and mammals are already adapting both behaviorally and genetically. While some species will be unable to adapt to new conditions quickly enough to survive, Seidl argues that those that do can show us how to increase our own capacity for resilience if we work to change our collective behavior. In looking at climate change as an opportunity to establish new cultural norms, Seidl inspires readers to move beyond loss and offers a refreshing call to evolve.

Genres: Environment, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

As a practiced ecologist, activist and mother of two girls, Amy Seidl writes with a lucid and passionate eye about the state of life itself in the age of global warming. By drawing on her 20 year career studying ecology, evolution, and butterflies across the North American continent, she illuminates the historical significance and the everyday local impacts of global warming upon the 21st century landscape.

A passionate speaker on contemporary environmental issues, Seidl frequently keynotes and lectures on climate change, renewable energy, local food systems, and the emerging field of sustainability science. Her research in ecological systems and alternative energy makes her a sought-after lecturer on global warming and green design and she emphasizes the need to innovate and build new physical infrastructures that do not rely on fossil fuels.

Seidl received a Doctorate in Biology from the University of Vermont, a Masters in Entomology from Colorado State University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College. She has taught in the Environmental Programs at UVM and Middlebury College and is currently a Research Scholar at Middlebury. Amy is married to Daniel Goodyear and they live in Huntington, Vermont with their children in a solar and wind-powered home.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I heard Amy Seidl interviewed on NPR, I knew I wanted to read her positive take on the issue of climate change which is usually labeled "Global Warming". Although the term is correct, the fear and dispair that Global Warming has come to represent doesn't seem so insurmountable when it is called climate change, a description of a period that has been occured many times in the past. Seidl points out that even if we were to immediately cease our carbon emissions, we would still face climate change. With this realistic approach she assures us that we can adapt and persist and she gives us scientific research as well as examples of adaptive strategies that others are experimenting with and adopting.

This means changing! Another scary word for some but one we can soften by accepting the fact that we are in the midst of climate change due to our carbon complicity. Resources that are renewable are available and as our conscience begins to motivate more of us to change our behaviors others will transition also.

Seidl reminds us: "......mitigation moves at the speed of politics while adaptatin moves at te speed of events."
"Cultural transitions take time because core values are deep-seated. The small but growing new culture seeks a profound shift in values. It seeks a path that breaks with consumption and leads to a prudent use of resources that meet our needs while preserving life on Earth."

"There is no doubt that actions based in self-reliance and in ideas about sufficiency will not alone change the world. Certainly not during the lifetimes of the people living today. Yet they make measurable differences in our lives, in our identity , and in the values we develop in others. The world is tranitioning.....The Great Turning is our to enact." A most inspiring read and a motivator to do more.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seidl argues for humanity to embrace the ethic of adaptation while continuing to work to reverse climate change. Good conversational points, though there's a lot more to be said and worked out in adaptation in urban areas and for folks who are already pressed and stressed in basic survival, who are already adapting a great deal, and might not have access to some of the resources that will allow for climactic adaptation.

The one chapter I found really troubling was the one on self-reliance. Emerson wasn't self-reliant and neither was Thoreau. They lived in a community of people, supported in great part by the efforts of others. Yes, even while Thoreau lived at Walden. He ate regular meals with his friends, relied on things he brought with him, not least of which is the wisdom of what he had learned in community. The American ideal of self-reliance has been destructive of real communities and encouraged a self-regard that leaves the good of others out. People need each other and healthy biodiversity includes the interdependence we share with each other and the different gifts each of us has. If we're truly going to adapt, yes, we can't be primarily consumers, we also have to be creators, but we need to be creating together, sharing generously, and moving past a world measuring human value by either transactions or the ability to withhold participating in the whole.

Still, adaptation is before us all.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A positivist's view of climate change(who happens to be a professor of ecology at the University of Vermont) and how we as humans can adapt and persist. Reason for hope...

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Seidl's book is a clearly written and non-preachy volume on the implications of the climate change which we are experiencing. She outlines what the ramifications of the warming trend will be, how plant and animal populations adapt (or become extinct) under changing environmental conditions and provides discussions of how humans might adapt culturally to the climate changes we are and will continue to experience. Stressing the importance of local adaptions to environmental challenges, she uses examples from her own research and her own green home in Vermont, including solar and wind power, the locavore movement, the need for sustainable agriculture and energy efficient/producing architecture. I enjoyed this book and will use lessons learned from it in my biological anthropology class.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful and realistic overview of current research on climate change and ecology, how future changes are likely to affect the environment and our lifestyles, etc. Good read for a variety of interest levels, it's not necessary to be either a scientist or a tree-hugger to find the information useful and thought-provoking.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pragmatic and hopeful discussion of how humans can and should adapt to the age of warming and climate change, this book was a much needed antidote to the fatalism and depressing forecasts of other climate change books. It does not negate the reality, but it challenges us to respond in adaptive, rather than fatalistic, ways.