On July 1, my neighbor gave birth to a baby girl. I met her a few days later, sleeping outside on her aunt’s lap on a hot, hazy evening in Northwest Denver. I ignored another air quality alert on my phone and complimented her full head of hair. I am nearing 30 years old; I remember summers free of wildfire smoke and ozone-alerts.

Will she?

“Shifting baseline syndrome” refers to the gradual change in accepted norms across generations. In 1995, a marine biologist coined the term to describe the acceptance of deteriorating fishery health caused by the absence of an established ecological baseline. But shifting baseline syndrome can be applied much more generally: The version of the natural world that younger generations consider normal and acceptable may be worse compared to that of their parents, and significantly worse than that of their grandparents, compounding over generations.

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A potential consequence of widespread shifting baseline syndrome is lowered expectations for environmental quality that lead to unambitious conservation policies and programs. For example, should Denverites be content with the urban South Platte River as it is now — pretty, home to carp and occasional e-scooters? Or should we aim for a South Platte River so pollution-free that children can safely dunk their heads under? My baseline is the former, but Denver’s earliest settlers — and the people living in the region for millennia prior — would perhaps have been scandalized to see an unswimmable-river, considering the latter a baseline.

Climate change is tangibly underway. Without drastic and immediate action at the federal and international level, we have a long road ahead. Before the next generation’s expectation of our environment erodes, it’s worth taking stock — what’s our baseline? What version of the Centennial State should my baby neighbor fight for one day? Because it shouldn’t be the parched winter and smoky summer of 2026.

Thanks to a milieu of local and federal institutions, Colorado has an abundance of historical and current climate data to establish quantitative baselines. Colorado has historical measurements for temperature dating back to the mid-19th century, which is how we know that the 21st century has been abnormally warm, on average. According to the third addition of Colorado State University’s “Climate Change in Colorado” the annual temperature in Colorado increased by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit between 1980 and 2022. Beyond temperature, we have historic data available, and therefore baselines for floods, wildfires, Colorado River flow and much more.

We need to treat wildfire smoke like the public health crisis it is

Yet, telling the multi-generational saga of climate change via numbers is decidedly abstract and impersonal. There is a need for a different type of stock-take, one that is anecdotal, qualitative, and personal.

Consider the changing levels of precipitation in Colorado. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has data of annual precipitation in Colorado going back to 1895. So we know that as of 2024, four of the five driest years on record in the state occurred after 2000. But that fact doesn’t convey the experience of climate change like a memory does, such as Michael’s memory of “monsoon rains.”

Michael, who grew up on a celery farm in Arvada in the 1960s-80s, remembers a downpour of monsoon rains every summer afternoon, an important source of water for the farm. These days, afternoon storms still occur, but, he says, not as reliably. Or, consider Karina’s perception of temperature change. She grew up in Louisville in the 2000s. As a kid, Karina and her sister spent winter weekends riding the bus to Eldora to snowboard. As an adult, she senses that the season starts later and ends earlier, giving her fewer opportunities to snowboard.

I have heard from individuals who are shocked by windier summers, earlier spring blooms, and the preponderance of wildfires, smoke, and dangerous natural disasters, like the floods of 2013. Although subjective and anecdotal, these feelings capture the tangible outcomes of our shifting climate better than numbers. Stories about climate change can contribute to the quantitative data that academics and researchers collect, and could make the data more comprehensible.

People should continue to communicate with each other about our changing world. Even when commenting on the heat and smoke feels repetitive, it serves an important purpose: It slows the normalization of worse conditions. It prevents our baseline from shifting. If we collectively remember how the natural world can be and should be, then when society is ready, we can fight for it.