Connecting with nature and talking to grandparents can help us become more aware of environmental declines.
People of all ages are now increasingly aware of the current ecological crisis. In 2019, the UN IPBES Global Assessment announced that global biomass of wild mammals had fallen by 82% while temperatures soared to the hottest on record and over 1 million species were considered at risk of extinction. Yet, it’s often extremely difficult to translate such enormous global issues into concepts relevant to our daily lives.
It’s often easier to look back and consider change in our own lives and ask, “How much change have I experienced?” As a child I remember enjoying huge variety of birds in our garden, annual snowfall and predictable summers, all things that seem less common today. Thinking back, remembering the past and considering change allows us to better judge current conditions. How many bird species used to arrive in the garden each spring? Is that different to now?
The world we grow up in and observe from an early age forms our personal reference point, or baseline, against which we compare all future experiences of change. We are inherently influenced by our own sense of what is ‘normal’ and what are acceptable changes from that starting point. Looking further into the past, it’s even harder to fathom the experiences of our ancestors and how they might see the world today, as what we now consider pristine nature, might appear to them as wholly degraded.
Generational amnesia is masking nature’s decline
People of all ages are now increasingly aware of the current ecological crisis. In 2019, the UN IPBES Global Assessment announced that global biomass of wild mammals had fallen by 82% while temperatures soared to the hottest on record and over 1 million species were considered at risk of extinction. Yet, it’s often extremely difficult to translate such enormous global issues into concepts relevant to our daily lives.
It’s often easier to look back and consider change in our own lives and ask, “How much change have I experienced?” As a child I remember enjoying huge variety of birds in our garden, annual snowfall and predictable summers, all things that seem less common today. Thinking back, remembering the past and considering change allows us to better judge current conditions. How many bird species used to arrive in the garden each spring? Is that different to now?
The world we grow up in and observe from an early age forms our personal reference point, or baseline, against which we compare all future experiences of change. We are inherently influenced by our own sense of what is ‘normal’ and what are acceptable changes from that starting point. Looking further into the past, it’s even harder to fathom the experiences of our ancestors and how they might see the world today, as what we now consider pristine nature, might appear to them as wholly degraded.
Generational amnesia is masking nature’s decline
