Why “Shifting Baseline Syndrome” Makes It Harder to Save the Planet

Why “Shifting Baseline Syndrome” Makes It Harder to Save the Planet

When she was growing up, Mia Monroe remembers, monarch butterflies were a natural part of the rhythm of life. This was in the 1960s, and Mia and her family lived in San Carlos, California, at that time a bedroom community of redwood bungalows and postwar cottages located south of San Francisco. She was a “nature kid,” and from a very early age, she recalls, monarchs shaped her emotional landscape. She gathered the milkweed that grew in clumps al…