To the Editor:
As many of us are enjoying this year’s warm but rather dark winter in Central New York, I was drawn to a story carried by the Post-Standard on Feb. 1, 2024, “To see climate dangers, look to chickadees.” The story depicted the plight of mountain chickadees in the far-off Sierra Nevada of eastern California. As you know, our own Black Capped Chickadees are such joyous little birds who are, perhaps, too friendly for their own good.
The mountain chickadees were the focus of study by two behavioral ecologists interested in the “incredible cognitive spatial abilities” that allow them to be food storage specialists. They can hide tens of thousands of food items in every conceivable nook and cranny of the forest in the fall, and then retrieve those caches in the winter months. Unfortunately, extreme weather variations associated with climate change - more extreme snow years and drought years - are severely challenging the chickadees’ survival strategies. Intense winter storms and frigid temperatures make it difficult to survive the winter, and then severely limit the ability of survivors to breed. Some winters leave snow so deep that nesting sites remain buried come spring.
The story of the chickadees’ failure to adapt to a changing climate is not unique to this little bird, but increasingly true for a majority of the creatures we share this planet with: doing their very best to use the specialized knowledge and instincts formed by their long evolutionary pasts, but simply unable to adapt to the changing conditions of a rapidly changing climate. They are losing.
Fortunately, we humans are not like that. We adapt. That is our genius. Not only are we masters of adaptation on the individual level. We work collectively to protect ourselves by building movable seawalls, air conditioning our shelters, using our technology to ensure a steady supply of food, water, and energy, and yes, even treating the diseases that come with climate change. Doomsayers be damned, we will survive. But what sort of world will we survive in?
As humans, we have choices. We can choose to do little more than we have already done to address the climate crisis. Or we can do more. We can work to preserve and promote healthy forests across the globe, build our power grid to accommodate increased energy from wind and solar, ensure that our buildings are properly electrified, and perhaps even place a price on the carbon pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels here in the U.S. and enact carbon border adjustments on foreign goods produced with the inefficient use of fossil fuels in their home countries. Or we can enjoy a warm, dark future, increasingly alone on this beautiful planet.
Robert Kuehnel
Treasurer
Onondaga Audubon
LaFayette
