The New Normal : The world’s climate has already changed. Now what?

Right now, New Mexico is warmer than it was a decade ago. Since the 1960s, the growing season has lengthened. More than half of the state’s native plants and animals have already been affected by climate change; some bird populations have shifted; some flowers bloom earlier. Sand dunes are spreading as vegetation dies. Conifer forests, weakened by drought and susceptible to bark beetles (whose numbers soared thanks to warmer temperatures) are suffering die-offs. Day to day, we have low river flows, dry soils and wildfires. Already this fiscal year, 1,242 square miles of New Mexico have burned. Worldwide, scientists are watching their models and predictions play out—and we’re all experiencing symptoms no one expected.

McCarthy is The Nature Conservancy’s director of conservation programs and also director of the Conservancy’s Southwest Climate Change Initiative. He has authored a number of reports detailing changes already occurring, predictions and adaptive management. He also works on what used to be called “ecological management” and is now known as “transformation ecology.” As one of the first places hit by human-caused climate change in New Mexico, the Jemez Mountains have become a laboratory. (The only place in the state that has warmed more in recent years is southwestern New Mexico’s boot heel.) “We’re moving beyond denial to acceptance that we can’t restore these forests anymore—because the forest of 50, 100 years ago wouldn’t survive in 2050,” McCarthy says. “So the question becomes: What is an ecosystem that’s sustainable in 20 or 50 years?”