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.

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

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.