Shifting Baseline Syndrome

There is a phenomenon that results from the relatively brief window of time a single human lifetime provides: we perceive the current state of the natural world as 'normal'. 

This is known as the Shifting Baseline Syndrome.

What is normal now was not normal in previous times and, because we can't always compare and contrast then and now, we are blinkered from realising just how much damage we're doing to the world.

For example, European settler descriptions of the Atlantic cod stocks off the Grand Banks of North America once described fishing grounds so plentiful and dense with fish that they could be walked on.

By 1992 there were so few adult cod left that the Canadian government was forced to ban fishing on the Banks. 

And the same story can be told for whaling, logging and land clearance for beef farming. Even the state of your car windscreen has changed. Have you noticed that you're getting a lot fewer 'splatters' these days? It's nothing to do with car design. It's because insect numbers have crashed. 

New 17 year old drivers will have no concept of what windscreens looked like when their parents, or grandparents, learned to drive. A cleaner windscreen is the new 'normal'.   

For a full explanation of Shifting Baseline Syndrome, do read through this excellent Twitter stream by @bidetmarxman. It's where I lifted these images from.

It's both fascinating and tragic.