As our environment continues to be damaged on a large scale, our collective perception of what is natural and healthy is not fixed. This is the shifting baseline syndrome (SBS). Yes its a thing. Each new generation or immigration wave have revised reference points, perceiving the situation they grew up in or came from, as the norm. As our belief of what is normal becomes distorted, we become less motivated as a society to address the growing degradation of the natural environment. So Utopia is gone and we don’t even really know what it was like. Lets accept that but at the same time do our utmost for coming generations that their baseline is not horribly far from our own.

Read More

Science is often seen as an objective and impartial pursuit of knowledge. It is based on empirical evidence and rigorous testing, and its findings are supposed to be free from biases, conflicts of interest, or any other subjective influences. However, the reality is far from ideal, and the scientific community is not immune to the human foibles of biases, prejudices, and vested interests.

Read More

We provide a position paper and argue that scientists should transition away from traditional in-person conferences, ones that are inherently both high carbon and low inclusion and suggest a move toward a more ethical model of conferencing as exampled by virtual conferences.

Read More

All lifeforms have an environmental niche. A niche resource can be light, energy, temperature, water, food, shelter, territory, mates or anything needed for the organism to persist and reproduce. Of course, changes can occur…

Read More

Our cities continue to grow. All governments, developers and most economists continue to promote this as a good thing but is it good for all? There are plenty of first-degree losers suffering under this relentless onslaught of greenfield development. Habitat removal continues to be the most obvious and significant threatening process affecting wildlife in Australia today…

Read More