(CN) — A team of mostly California-based researchers argue that the state should take a forward thinking approach to climate change by instituting policies that anticipate the changes to its many ecosystems, rather than looking backward.
California "has more native plants, animals, and vegetation types; more variation in bedrock and soils, climate, and fire ecology; and superimposed on this natural mosaic, a larger human population, larger economy, more diverse agriculture, more invasive species, and more renewable energy production than any other U.S. state or most entire countries," researchers say the paper, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And in terms of biodiversity, it stands to lose as much as anywhere from climate change. California's biodiversity hotspots could lose an average of 19% of their native plant species by 2080, according to the authors. Some of these hot spots could migrate up the coast or up to higher elevations; others might disappear altogether.
Susan Harrison of the University of California, Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the paper's lead author, says that even 19% is a conservative estimate.
Harrison said there are, traditionally, two arguments for why we should care about the threat to species most of us don't see or think about very often should concern us.
"There's the utilitarian argument — that all species are important, we just don’t know why," Harrison said. "And there's the philosophical and ethical argument — we should be concerned about how fast things are changing."
She added: "Personally, I think the second one is more honest. We have this innate feeling that yes, this is important, and letting things change this fast is stupid."
California has laid out some ambitious plans to fight and adapt to climate change. It has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2045 — largely by building out its green energy capacity, which will include a heathy quantity of solar and wind power production. Somewhat less well known is the state's plan to permanently conserve 30% of all land and 30% of all coastal waters by 2030, in the so-called 30x30 plan.
One of the researchers' main arguments is that elected officials shouldn't use the old paradigm of conservation.
"Conservation biology is in the middle of the big rethink," said Harrison. "The old way was keeping everything the same. That’s less of an option these days."
Harrison and her colleagues urge planners to keep in mind the places that species will leave, and try to predict where they'll go to after the planet heats up, and to try to conserve those places. And to not fill those places up with solar and wind farms.
"When we map out potential areas for solar development, we should be considering biodiversity," Harrison said.
The researchers also argue that California needs to change its fire management policy.
"Current policies remain focused on fire suppression despite the inevitability of fire and the ecological necessity for periodic fire in many California ecosystems," they write in the paper. "Greater use of fire as a management and restoration tool may be the only way to mitigate the risks of increasingly catastrophic, stand-replacing fires as the climate warms and fire weather becomes more severe."
“This paper is pointing out that we need to be proactive,” said co-author James Thorne of UC Davis, in a written statement. “We can’t be reactive like, ‘Oh, this wildfire is out of control. Oh, this species is disappearing. Oh, we misplaced where this green energy site should go.’ We have tools that can be used, some of which we discuss in this paper.”
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