‘The apparent chaos of the Anthropocene is turbocharging evolution itself’: Plants are finding ways to survive and thrive in the climate crisis — if we let them

Biodiversity loss has been recognized as a threat to global stability for decades. The decline in overall diversity of species on our planet, either through extinction or a fall in abundance, can culminate in ecosystem collapse.

But in this excerpt from “Despite it All” (Granta, 2026), author and journalist Fred Pearce looks at the remarkable resilience of nature. If we can put aside our notions of what should and shouldn’t be in a given environment and leave nature to adapt and thrive, we may begin to see the gains needed to support a healthy biosphere.

So do many oldschool ecologists, says Chris Thomas, an ecologist at the University of York. They too often simply ignore any bits of nature that do not meet their expectations of what “should” be present. “The establishment of successful species in new locations is commonly interpreted as further evidence that the Earth’s system is departing from a more desirable state,” he told me.

So when biodiversity assessments are conducted, “alien” species lurking in the undergrowth are simply not counted. As outsiders, they are deemed not to belong to the ecosystem they inhabit. Thomas says that, in Britain, official records show biodiversity in decline, even though, if we add all losses and all gains together, “it is unequivocally true that the total number of species in Britain is increasing.”

Most of the gains — the weeds, pests and alien species — are kept off the biodiversity books. This amounts to an ecological catch-22. Biodiversity can only ever decrease, as new species are seen as inimical to the local environment, and each year millions of pounds, dollars and euros are being spent to eliminate them.

We spend huge amounts of money trying to eradicate weeds, many of which may be beneficial for the environment.

(Image credit: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)

Of course, it sometimes makes practical sense to eradicate invaders. I don’t say we shouldn’t try to keep out pests that cause short-term ecological mayhem and economic damage. But if we choose to get rid of new species, we can’t then hold up our hands in horror at declining biodiversity. And besides, ecologically as much as socially, migrants can stir things up to good effect. They interact with other species — eating or being eaten, pollinating, and rotting after death to nurture new organisms.

We should embrace novel ecosystems that contain both what we regard as native species and the feral, opportunistic interlopers that find their new environment congenial. In his book about weeds, British naturalist Richard Mabey celebrated what he called these “outlaw plants” and showed how they have had a hand in shaping not only our landscape but our civilization, becoming crops, medicines and sources of beauty and creative inspiration.

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It is easy to be nostalgic about past ecosystems as a golden age. But what we imagine to be the perfect ecological state — a supposedly natural order of things that often gets called “the balance of nature” — was mostly itself a passing phase. Nature is always moving on. And more often than we realize, humans have had a hand in what we now like to regard as natural.

We should be careful not to let our reverence for the pristine blind us to the environmental potential of today’s wastelands

Environmental scientist Erle Ellis, who runs the Anthroecology Lab of the University of Maryland, argues persuasively that most of the planet has been heavily influenced by human activity for thousands of years, including places such as the Amazon that we often think of as untouched. We have, in effect, long lived on a “used planet,” and humans and nature have not historically been at odds. The most biodiverse places are often those where people have lived the longest. By constantly tending the land, past civilizations created ever-changing mosaics of habitats where more species thrived than in places with less human interference.

So, we should be careful not to let our reverence for the pristine blind us to the environmental potential of today’s wastelands, backwoods, abandoned fields, scrublands and no-go areas. In a Good Anthropocene we are likely to need more of them.

There is a final reason for believing that nature is equipped for recovery from almost anything we can throw at it. The apparent chaos of the Anthropocene is turbocharging evolution itself. Every perturbation of our environment creates an opportunity for existing species to adapt or for new ones to evolve, says Chris Thomas.

Plant evolution is happening at an increasing rate as species adapt to changing conditions. Allowing it to happen could help increase biodiversity.

(Image credit: Rosmarie Wirz/Getty Images)

I first met Thomas in 2004, when he had just published an influential paper warning that climate change could wipe out a quarter of the world’s species this century. He called it “terrifying.” It was headline news. Two decades later, he has not changed that forecast, but he has added an important rider. Despite the coming extinction holocaust, he told me, “the Anthropocene could raise biological diversity.”

His research is showing that evolution in the twenty-first century is speeding up to fill the gaps left by the extinctions — delivering new and better-adapted species. “The seeds of recovery are already visible,” he told me. “Genes are jumping around. New species are beginning to emerge.” Rob Dunn, an ecologist at North Carolina State University, agrees. In his book “A Natural History of the Future,” he says that this evolutionary spurt is happening fastest in urban landscapes, where species are adapting to city life with almost as much alacrity as newly arrived humans.

This urban ecological renaissance resembles the story of the finches on the Galápagos archipelago, which Charles Darwin observed to have evolved different beaks to match the food on the different islands. In modern cities, house mice have evolved to produce saliva with a chemical make-up better able to digest the carbohydrates available in urban food; cockroaches and bedbugs have developed resistance to pesticides and even learned to avoid sugar-impregnated bait; London’s pigeons have learned to commute on the Underground. We have clothes moths and carpet beetles.

Such natural innovations may not always be cuddly, but they do show that nature is on the prowl in the Anthropocene. So where is biodiversity headed? It is undeniable that most species of plants and animals are currently in numerical decline in a human-centric world.

This global disturbance is favouring some generalists — so-called superspecies — that can occupy a wide range of habitats, displacing local, rare and specialist species. Locally, however, biodiversity has sometimes increased substantially, especially in the rich kaleidoscopes of gardens, parks, toxic brownfield sites, roadside verges and so on that humanity has helped create.

Such places may become crucibles for a biodiversity rebound. Understanding this reality should change how we do conservation. We should not abandon nature to its fate. Some of our favourite species will pass into history unless we act to save them, and I’d vote for action any day. But it does mean embracing rather than rejecting the processes of change. Change in the Anthropocene is good. We should be grateful that nature is finding a way.

This is an extract from Despite it All by Fred Pearce, published by Granta.

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Despite It All: A Handbook for Climate Hopefuls

In “Despite it All,” Fred Pearce looks at the positive environmental changes that have taken place over the last four decades, from the defused population bomb to the unstoppable rise of renewables. While acknowledging there is still an enormous amount of work to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, Pearce shows there is hope for the future — HO