Our shifting understanding of an ever-shrinking natural environment

One of the most significant environmental challenges we face today is not an explicit threat to a particular ecosystem, such as deforestation or coral bleaching. Rather, it is a matter of perception — a matter of how we, humanity, perceive the environment.

The threat I am speaking of is known as “shifting baseline syndrome.” And it is something that more of us need to be aware of if we are to halt or reverse the degradation of the natural world. We can use the analogy of the frog in boiling water to explain SBS.