June 08, 2004
6/8 - Complaints about Shifting Baselines
For about every 25 wonderful e-mails we get from people saying nice things about what we are doing with SB, we get the occasional anti-environmentalist who is basically irked with everything environmental, for which our dancing around with Hollywood celebrities represents the ultimate affront.
Here's the latest sample which arrived yesterday (we won't list the author's name):
Shifting Baselines? Maybe it should be called " Shifting Memory Lines?" Of course the state of many things here on this earth will be different now as opposed to 150 yrs. ago... or even 25 yrs. ago The earth IS changing, it has always been changing from the beginning of time, and it will always be changing, no power that man posseses will stop it. I do think the fish we harvest out of the oceans should be managed and it appears that is being done. As for the stories of: "you should have seen the ocean when I was a kid" It is a fantasy to think we should or can keep the state of the oceans, or anything else in this world in a dream-state, or "ideal" state year after year, generation after generation forever! I think most Americans are realists and they know that time and natural disasters, and an ever-increasing world population will change the world year after year.
Maybe this is like other exaggerated causes taken up by radicals who are confused about their own purpose in life and they desparately need a cause to make them feel like they matter? I genuinely hope this group is NOT successful in what usually happens when a group garners political support for their cause..... it translates into more laws restricting all American's personal reedoms to enjoy their enviroment, specifically our oceans... in US. waters. Did you know that people in Russia/ Ukraine have more personal freedoms than Americans do? but their economy is so poor it restricts them from enjoying it as they could.
Let's calm down and be thankful for what we do have, and not try so hard to get what we can't have, or shouldn't have. Accept that there are always going to be changes, they are not always bad changes, just different.
Yes, I've often heard that environmental conditions in Russia/Ukraine are the best.
Pristine Russia: Oil spill on the Sakhalin coast