adaptation

The science of climate change adaptation was created before its practitioners existed. International bodies working to identify the effects of climate change and to create legal frameworks for solutions deemed it to exist. Today, there is no time for a methodical evolution of the field as the count-down for the world as we know it has started. Of course the planet is not going to blow-up when it reaches zero but there will be an increasing number of changes with fewer and fewer opportunities to choose ways to adapt to them.

I just came back from a week of backpacking in the Gila Wilderness. I hiked from the hot New Mexico desert into cool moist canyons lush with blooming yellow Columbines and omnipresent poison ivy all the way to cool dry peaks where firs, pines and aspen formed healthy green forests. In places, wildfires have killed trees whose boles will retain the stored carbon for years to come providing great drumming opportunities for the local woodpeckers and flickers. We discover these while pitching our tent under a patch of remnant green trees in a large burn area.