Ah, Copenhagen. We pinned our hopes and dreams on that Scandinavian city, and our hearts have been broken. They were not broken by the Danes mind you, but by all the people of the world who could not come to an agreement and save their own ship. Fingers crossed for better luck at the next meeting in Cancun later this year.

In the meantime we should not sit on our collective hands and wait. Rather we should take up the cause as a personal (or organizational, or national) matter and change our own actions to match our now committed climate changed reality.

No, we’re not just talking about CFLs and improved fuel economy for the cars some people still foolishly drive to work. We’re talking about how conservation practitioners and resource managers do their jobs. About how the decisions we make every day need to be robust enough to stand up to the challenges we face now with atmospheric carbon dioxide hovering around 387ppm, over the next decades as temperatures climb, and over the next two millennia as the effects of climate change continue to play out around the planet. Yep, it’s a long-term fix we’ve gotten ourselves into, and it’s going to require some long-term fixes by us.

Simply put, when we plan and implement conservation and management actions we need to consider not just the proximal problem, such as traditional concerns like habitat fragmentation and pollution, and not just the effects of climate change that we notice today. We need to think about how to make decisions that will serve us well as change continues. We can make decisions now that maximize the chance for a positive future for people and nature, or we can make decisions that effectively put us in cul-de-sacs with no good future options. Our decisions today must encompass the long-term interests of many groups across land- and seascapes, not just the short-term interests of a few.

Just as we need to take seriously taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the amount of change we are locked into is growing each day and everyday, and more so than the day before, we need to make adaptation part of our lives and our life’s work.