Adapt or die: what the natural world can teach us about climate change

Climate change may be the central challenge of our century, but almost all attention has focused on its consequences for one organism: Homo sapiens. In an original, wide-ranging and carefully researched book, the American biologist Thor Hanson addresses its implications for the rest of life.

Rather than overwhelming us with a sense of catastrophe, he adopts a balanced approach. He doesn’t baulk at pointing out that plants and animals are showing signs of stress — indeed one of his conclusions is that climate change isn’t imminent: the consequences are everywhere right now. But his book documents how many species, from butterflies to butterflyfish, are showing remarkable resilience.

He reminds us that the choices open to most species are few: they can flee, hide or adapt. The evidence for the first is now overwhelming, with biologists calculating that up to 85 per cent of the Earth’s wildlife is on the move. A single example is the speckled wood butterfly, which has spread since the 1920s from strongholds in south-west England and lowland Wales to northern Scotland. It has even acquired additional wing muscle to accommodate its new northern lifestyle.

In Papua New Guinea and Peru the latest ornithological research has found that whole bird communities are relocating up mountain slopes to retain their preferred ecological conditions. The most startling discovery is that changes are unfolding even in pristine forest habitats devoid of human interference. Hanson’s conclusion is that nowhere is sufficiently remote to escape the greenhouse gas effects produced in, say, North Yorkshire or West Virginia.

The most unexpected new migrants are not birds but trees. North American studies indicate that, since 1980, more than 60 of the arboreal species examined have substantially shifted range.