Getting Acclimated

Dr. Michaeleen Gerken Golay
Dean of Baccalaureate Programs

Last year I moved across the country to join Unity. Since landing in this new place, I’ve enjoyed exploring wild places and learning new-to-me trees, mushrooms, and caterpillars. Being in this new place has got me thinking about novelty and newness, and how I had gotten used to my old surroundings and settled into the routines and the sameness. 

In ecology, this is acclimation, this getting used to your surroundings. An organism’s body gets used to the new environment, sometimes this is apparent in their morphology (think of an animal that develops a thicker coat in the cold), but more often the response is a set of physiological adjustments so that the organism does not invest extra energy in maintaining homeostasis in the new conditions. Organisms of all sorts have a range of conditions that their species and their own individual genes can tolerate and a narrower range they do best in. Most of us tend to hang out in the narrow range. We become acclimated to these conditions, and only move to the edges of our tolerance zone out of necessity or for opportunities to take advantage of resources like sunlight, food, space, or a really great job.

The outer range of tolerance is on a lot of scientists’ minds as we try to predict what organisms will survive altered conditions associated with climate change. We are tracking shifting migration patterns, or changes to seasonal food sources. We are monitoring populations that are declining rapidly because they can’t shift their home ranges (humans have put cities, roads, and other built infrastructure in the way). Other types of organisms are becoming more abundant because they are able to quickly adapt and exploit the new conditions, sometimes to the point of becoming a nuisance. 

Lots of organisms could tolerate, acclimate, and eventually adapt (at the evolutionary time scale) to the new environments that global warming is creating. However, human-caused climate change is happening too fast. For example, trees expand, contract, and shift their ranges over centuries, as seeds are dispersed to new spots inches, feet, or miles away from the parent tree each season. Those that survive grow and mature and in a few decades, create seeds of their own. So some trees would need centuries to move a few miles but temperatures are warming, oceans are rising, and moisture regimes are shifting much more rapidly than that. 

For climate week, I’m thinking about acclimation and complacency. Before my move, I had acclimated to my old state and started to become complacent. I think many of us do the same with climate change. Even though environmental conditions get incrementally worse, we get used to it and forget about the urgency. When we first learn about it, we want to act. We sign up or speak up to raise awareness and we make some lifestyle changes. But then we settle back into a routine and don’t keep trying. You can always continue to strive for better as a consumer and in the daily choices you make. But that is not enough. There’s no better time than election season to think about the critical role of our policy makers and elected officials to effect real change to slow climate change. 

If you’re passionate about the environment, and my guess is that most of you reading this are, set aside some time this week not just to go outside to enjoy the wild places, but to do some research about the folks on your ballot for election this fall and how they plan to act on climate change issues. Find the balance between acclimation and becoming complacent.

For more information see the following:

Article on Climate Complacency from The Conversation
Working paper on Climate Policy Diffusion Across US States from the International Monetary Fund
Local action from the League of Women Voters

Sites for learning more about candidate stances on climate-related issues and policies:
Presidential candidates on climate change from Ballotpedia
Energy issues from League of Conservation Voters

Learn about what’s on your local ballot from non-partisan sources:
www.vote.org
www.votesmart.org