Changes and Shifting Baselines

My musing for the day.

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Borders, corporate wise, has been making my job less enjoyable (and for my store) the past 6 or more months. Managers (besides the GM) are no longer salary, they cut an entire manager position, we don't get free tea/coffee from the cafe anymore, they got rid of the $30 monthly EGC (electronic gift card) for full-time employees, we don't get holiday pay anymore, they're changing the return policy, they're changing our ordering system (which we think is less customer friendly), they've cut our hours a few times, they cut something like 20% (or was it 40%?) of corporate staff, and there are some other smaller in-store changes that have happened.

Changes are hard, especially when they're in the "negative" realm, but I can't help thinking that when the next wave of Borders employees come through, these changes won't affect them at all. It's only because I've been at Borders for 4 years and am experiencing these "negatives" that have made me enjoy my job less. It's the same for my fellow employees too. We've hired a few new employees since this all started and to them it's how Borders is. All you need is the next generation to live with the changes from the start and the changes don't seem that significant at all. It's the shifting baseline.

This thought all came about because I'm editing some changes to the NOEP's non-market webpage. I was reading something about the creation of the first national system of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and they're equated to our (the U.S.) system of national parks and wilderness areas. Hardly anyone ever complains about the national parks or our wilderness areas. They've been ingrained into the US's history now and people understand the importance (for the most part) of protecting the land from destruction. I don't think you'd find too many people nowadays who'd complain about the creation of Yosemite, Yellowstone, or the Ventana Wilderness along the Central Coast. Yet, when it comes to creating MPAs, marine reserves and sanctuaries, there's a lot of upheaval from various stakeholders (or interested parties). This, of course, is because they're living through the change and not after the change.

When it comes down to it, though, there's not much difference between the ocean and the land in ways of the need to protect it. We need to protect the ocean just as much as land (for many different reasons I could spend an entire other post on - LoL). Sadly, it's generally accepted that land has always been better managed and protected than the ocean. Not until recent decades have we really understood the ocean and the need to protect it and that's mostly because of the inaccessibility that the ocean has. It's not like just anyone can submerse themselves in the ocean for an hour and not have to worry about breathing. You can walk into Yosemite and not have to strap yourself to a tank of air. There's also the difficulty in actually "managing" the ocean. You can put fences up on land. You can create borders. You can't do that with the ocean easily and something not being easy means you're spending more money. More expenditure, new changes/restrictions, and less "solid" science means the changes that are trying to be enacted now are much more difficult to handle for generations now. Give it 30 years and these changes won’t even seem significant.

I can't help but think years from now how different the Earth will be because of change. Future generations will have grown up with MPAs, marine sanctuaries, and marine reserves. Will they think that the government is trying to take away public "oceans" for some crackpot idea? I seriously doubt it. I also wonder what state our national parks will even be in from now. The ocean is vast and the reason why for years people thought there was no way resources from the ocean could ever be exhausted. Course, we probably thought the same thing for land too and untouched, pristine land is getting scarce. Will we start "creeping" upon national parks and wildernesses? Or will they protected forever? Right now, if the government wanted to turn Yosemite into a housing district, I think there'd be some bloodshed over that. But do we say drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) is okay, do we say drilling is okay within certain measures, or do we say drilling is not okay? If we say within certain measures, how do we make sure those measures are always kept and the baseline doesn't shift?

We're told by somebody sometime in our lives to not forget history. We read history books and we "remember" certain events, but what about the shifting baseline? Shifting baselines are sly because from generation to generation they don't seem like that much of a change. People don't live through changes very well, but growing up with a change we seem to do okay. So you change something a little to lessen the effect on current generations and then the next generation does that and so forth. Eventually, a HUGE change has occurred and you only notice it because you've looked at it from Point A and Point Z. You can't really prevent shifting baselines and changes, but they're real and affect all our lives. Borders has shifted its baseline and new employees aren't affected by this changed baseline. The implementation of a national system of MPAs is shifting the baseline in a more dramatic way, but it's changing.  Future generations won't think anything of MPAs like we don't think anything of national parks. The baseline is shifting for the good or bad, little or small because of change. So the question is...When do we say yes and no to change, compromises, and shifting baselines to protect our planet and our way of life? As people say…a little change never hurt anyone. Or does it?