Change—sometimes good, sometimes frightening—is inevitable, but according to Heidi Lasher, we need not feel powerless in the face of it. The antidote, she suggests, is simply to remember.
SHIFTING BASELINES is the idea that each successive generation will accept as “normal” an increasingly degraded and disorganized ecology, until at some point in the future, no one will remember what a healthy ecology looks and feels like. Absent any personal or societal accounting of migrating butterflies, winter snowfall, or spawning salmon, future generations will have tolerated so many small losses in population, abundance, and habitat that eventually they won’t know what they’re missing. Worse, they may not even care.
SOCIAL RESEARCHER Phoebe Hamilton Jones says the antidote to shifting baselines is found in our ability to pay attention and to call forth what once was. “Knowing the names of flora and fauna,” she says, “allows us to counter shifting baseline syndrome.” I imagine walking around in my backyard like a schoolteacher taking the daily roll call. Ponderosa pine? Here. Box elder bug? Here. American goldfinch? Here. Calling beings by their names builds familiarity and affinity, helps us notice subtle changes in health, lifestyle, or habitat, that we might wonder aloud about their well-being and mark their absences.
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