#shifting baseline

[tilbageidanmark]

SBS

[dr-otter]

Here is something to think about; if you don't often see ocean life, and live in the US east of Colorado and south of New England, the 1800 image would include flocks of hundreds of bright green and yellow parakeets. They were all gone 100 years later. Look around you. Ask questions. What else is missing now where you live? What would your biome look like if it were healthy?

[openlittermap]

This is central London less than 100 years ago. Today you will only experience a fraction of this but for many people this has become “normal”. We call this a shifting baseline. What is “normal” for us is very different than what was normal for our grandparents less than 100 years ago. Many bird populations are down over 90%, many 100% (extinct) and it is estimated that 100% of seabirds have now consumed plastic which is only starting to break up into smaller and smaller pieces in the ocean. Fight back by joining us and sharing data on plastic pollution to allow unrestricted access to legal and scientific investigation at OpenLitterMap.com 🌎🦅

[sharinglaudatosi]

Shifting Baseline Syndrome

Let's go back to 1950.  OK, too far back.  Some of you were not around. Try 1970, or whatever date in your childhood you want to choose.

How many insects did we commonly see?

How many species of birds?

How much snow fell in the winter?

What temperatures, and how many days, constituted a heat wave?

  Considerable changes have taken place in climate and biodiversity over the last 50 years. But we have pretty much forgotten what was the "old normal" and replaced it with the "new normal". And what was "normal" back then was not normal in previous times.

"'Shifting baseline' describes a gradual change in our accepted norms and expectations for the environment across generations. Our tolerance for environmental degradation increases and our expectations for the natural world are lowered." (National Parks Service)

Sharing Laudato Si' comes to you from the St. Andrew the Apostle Care for Creation Ministry, Brooklyn, New York, affiliated with the Metro New York Catholic Climate Movement.

                     Please share!

[tilbageidanmark]

Shifting Baseline Syndrome

[principleofplenitude]

[unknowndespair]

I laugh when people say Obama is far left... he is center-left at most.  It’s just that the Republicans have shifted the baseline so far to the right that his politics look extreme in comparison.

Sanders isn’t even really far left either, thought he is much farther left than Obama.

[bkkfm-magazine]

Baseline Babies

Evidence of the degradation of our environment is all around us, but the pressure to do something about this is surprisingly weak. Why? Scientists have an explanation. It's because we are all 'baseline babies'.

Scientists call it 'shifting baseline syndrome'. We all have a tendency to trust our own experiences more than other people's. And nobody young likes to hear an old-timer waxing on about how much better things used to be. These seem to be a universal traits, but they cause us to lose sight of changes taking place over several generations. The world we are born into becomes our baseline. Things get worse over our lifetime, but when the new generation is born, the baseline starts again at where the new kids came in. The result is that we end up taking for granted things that two generations ago would have caused an outrage. I have to say it pains me to think that my children might think of scenes like the one in the picture above as the norm. But, until I started thinking about it,  I have to admit I had no real sense of how my own concept of normal was different from my parents'. If you don't believe our baselines are shifting, you need to look at the preceding post.