From Parklane Landscapes
Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Think about walking through a park and thinking, “This seems healthy.” But maybe 30 years ago that same park had twice as many birds, wildflowers, or insects. If you never saw that version, you don’t feel the loss - and that quiet forgetting becomes the new baseline. Over time, we start accepting degraded ecosystems as normal.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
What helps:
Intergenerational conversations that reconnect us with what nature used to be.
Direct experiences with nature that sharpen our awareness of change.
Remembering (knowing) the past is the first step to restoring the future.
Not a sponsor, I don’t think it’s an AI graphic, and I think it has something important to say. Plus it does have an owl. We can’t save our animals if we don’t save them the spaces they need to thrive.
Weird question, not a dig, in Southern France they have metal or wooden shutters on all the windows. Is that something they have in the south of US? It makes a massive difference and takes zero electricity, then you just need an AC in your bedroom to go to sleep. Probably doesn’t work as well on wood houses that trap the heat and heat quickly though?
In every part of France actually. It really weird me out when I learn that it is was not standard in the USA. It is not like the purpose is not obvious. Would people live in houses without glass panel on the window as if they are “not that important”?!
No, shutters are usually fake molded vinyl things that don’t move, at least on most houses made after 1900. At best we have interior blinds or heavy blackout curtains.
Am feel like I’m going to regret it but: what is it like when it is not the best?
Bare naked windows or just light curtains.
Someone once shared a video showing the fancy exterior shutters they have in Germany and I was very jealous.
I saw a number of explanations why we don’t use real shutters, and probably the popularity of air conditioning, especially central AC compared to Europe from what I understand, is why ours are purely decorative nowadays.
Also if you enjoy a light brize do you sit un front of a vent??
But A/C doesn’t makes shade neither doesn’t it protect from light pollution and sun light in the early morning. It doesn’t protect the window from dust, wind. It doesn’t prevent the night cold from getting past that glass-pannel…
How do you get any of that without shutters ?
Our windows accomplish a lot of that, albeit maybe in a slightly more complicated way, most is just done on the inside.
Cheap windows are single pane, but we also have double, triple, and even quad pane windows that limit heat transfer. Things like cellular shades or blackout curtains can block the light and also absorb heat.
When you want breeze, the bottom sash opens, and the top sash can lower on fancier windows. They typically have a fixed screen to let in breeze but keep out bugs. Our patio doors also often have a sliding screen door also.
To clean them, the sashes will swing into the house so you can wipe the outside, so you can even clean the windows above ground.
Shade on the outside though, that we don’t have.