"Here's the playbook for the years ahead: loving but savvy... Amy Seidl talks us through the possibilities we have on the planet we've created. A landmark book."  --Bill McKibben

"Not since Helen and Scott Nearing penned their testaments to the 'Good Life' has a Vermont author given us such a thoughtful, hopeful, and pragmatic guide to living lightly--and well--on this long-suffering planet."

---Curt Stager, author of Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth  

While much of the global warming conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, ecologist and author Amy Seidl takes the uniquely positive--yet realistic--position that humans and animals can adapt and persist despite these climate changes.   

Seidl's newest book, Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Warming, confronts the growing fatalism of climate science with pragmatic thinking and optimistic opportunities for change. "While mitigating climate change is essential," she writes, "adapting to and through centuries of warming is paramount."  

Join Seidl for a free talk, Q&A, and book-signing on Thursday, April 25, at 7 p.m. at the NewsBank Conference Center, 352 Main Street, Chester, Vermont (across the street from the main NewsBank campus). Light refreshments will be provided. Seidl's book is available to borrow at the Whiting Library in Chester or for purchase at Misty Valley Books in Chester. The library will offer a discussion of the book in advance of Seidl's talk, on Wednesday, April 10, at 5 p.m.  

Click here to return to the top of the page.  

By Bob Engel, Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Science, Marlboro College 

Humans are among the most social species on the planet. Social animals are usually considered "smarter" than their solitary counterparts - they have to be to get along, after all. In theory, if you're social and smart, you can learn from one another. We do it every day, and we've been doing it since we were infants.

White-breasted nuthatch Photo by Peter Bergstrom

If you've had a pet, fed birds, or ridden horses, you also know that different species can learn from one another. Our cat is now the master of our universe. Recently, social learning has received a lot of scientific scrutiny. How did it evolve, who benefits, and are there any losers? It's a pretty hot topic.

This winter, I have been feeding birds only in the most modest of ways. I have what I think are two pairs of chickadees who have also learned how to manipulate me. They collect whenever I go outside. They give a couple of "chick-a-dees," and back in I dutifully go to get them some black oil sunflower seeds. We have a couple of agreed-upon feeding sites. (In another note I'll explain why I'm feeding in this rather silly and inefficient way.)

For a week now, a white-breasted nuthatch has been observing all of this. Yesterday, for the first time, he (black crown) joined in. He had learned from their behavior. Anyone who has fed birds has conducted this experiment: the smart kids, the chickadees, find the feeder first, then other species learn to play, with woodpeckers usually bringing up the rear.

How does this system work? The benefit to the nuthatch is clear, but what about the chickadees? Is nature's bounty endless? Doesn't a finite amount of food get depleted

as the winter goes by? Shouldn't food sharing have a cost?

We are dancing at the edge of a question that vexed Darwin. Why do individual organisms cooperate, or even "help" each other? Thus far, much of life is best understood as being selfish.

In so-called complex organisms, parents often care for offspring. Duh. OK, but why? Because they are closely related to each other. If we count up shared genes, we often understand why close relatives cooperate. Blood really is thicker than water. Parent/offspring and sibling combinations both share about fifty percent of each other's genes. If one of these combos doubles the reproductive output of the other via a positive act, it is the same as replacing itself. The same genes get out there.

So the chickadees might help each other find food because they are close blood relatives. But the nuthatch? Now we have to drag out something called byproduct mutualism. If you teach something to someone else as a byproduct of what you do anyway, that is also a diffuse form of cooperation. An observant nuthatch has an "aha" moment by spying some smart little bird finding a new food source. The chickadees didn't mean to inform the nuthatch-it just happened. Does the nuthatch "reciprocate?" Who knows what chickadees learn by keeping an eye on other hungry birds?