Shifting Baselines: Considering the Loss Before the Loss
Shifting Baselines: Considering the Loss Before the Loss Charlotte Fowler, Biology Student at Christopher Newport University Shifting Baseline Syndrome Shifting baselines was a theory first made by scientists exploring urban children's perception of nature. In the same year, Daniel Pauly officially devised the term 'shifting baselines' to help prove how people are inaccurately perceiving the condition of the environment and nature. The human race is reestablishing (shifting) their standard 'baseline' in each new generation. People use the image they obtained at the beginning of their conscious lives as what they accept as normal. They do not take into account anything that may have happened before their time. This is often referred to as generational amnesia which involves a loss of information without being aware of the loss. As Pauly explained in his TED Talk, "we are readjusting downwards." In the following section of t...