When scientists over-reach and journalists let them, we end up with a mixture of soothsaying and anxiety. So, I’m disappointed when media enables a narrative laced with despair that isn’t questioned even when scientists make absurd predictions about the future. Given the power of nature and the inherent adaptability of wildlife, we must present a counterpoint to pervasive commentary about ‘irreversible’ and ‘inevitable’ impacts of climate on Antarctic penguins. The narrative is increasingly using using these words which seems like catastrophising behaviour. It’s not helping understand the possibilities and it’s harming conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More efforts. Media should know better but it’s fuelling fear out of ignorance and lack of scrutiny of ecology issues. Penguins may adapt to climate change in surprising ways. Knowing this offers a chance to take lessons from nature and prepare ourselves for a different kind of future while tackling our current fossil fuel transition.
The Emperor’s new clothes
Two people rang me last week to communicate their despair over an ABC news report the Antarctic is suffering irreversible change with the inevitable extinction of Emperor Penguins.
There is no doubt climate change is happening and it’s real. But Professor Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist, gave the opinion that Emperor Penguins would be extinct by the end of the century. When the interviewer asked what evidence there was for population declined, they simply pointed to increasing population-level events (since writing, the interview has been re-edited to remove this important comment). This is only a fraction of the story though.
Abram has heard all of the arguments for the Emperor Penguin’s decline. After all, decline is the only thing any living scientist has ever to study and report on. However, they may not know about the adaptability of seabirds or considered other possibilities that might offer genuine alternative possibilities. Possibilities that enable a sophisticated community response and support for their conservation.
Continuous catastrophising hinders conservation
On 7 July 2025, a similar study was reported by the Spanish Institute of Marine Sciences, titled ‘Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean‘, linking to an article that said this irreversible change was to collapse global ocean systems overnight. That erupted across social media. One day later it turned out that media reporting had completely missed the point. The article has since been retitled and rewritten. It’s now called ‘a change in the Southern Ocean structure can have climate implications’.
‘Catastrophising’ – as my learned colleague Peter, a trauma counseller, points out – is a symptom of anxiety. According to a BBC news article, catastrophising is ‘a mental habit in which you overestimate the chances of something bad happening, and exaggerate the potential negative consequences of that scenario’:
If you have found that your own thoughts have started to take a downward turn in the last year or two, this may not be a coincidence: there is some evidence that world news events may exacerbate our catastrophising.
Catastrophising is a mechanism that shuts down thinking. Amplifying this part of the argument leads to inaction. Given eco-anxiety is already undermining our kids mental health, don’t journalists have a responsibility for more balanced reporting? After all, how else do we mobilise a new population of thinkers and doers?
This is not to say there’s no merit in explaining the risks. However, it is possible to communicate this without catastrophising. Catastrophising in environmental science has become the emperor’s new clothes. It’s particularly easy to do that when talking about wildlife, as few people (including ecologists) really understand how ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More work or have any examples of where things have happened differently.
The adaptability of penguins and the next 100 years
Emperor Penguins are at risk, there is no doubt about that – any animal that has to swim for a living is going to be at higher risk than one that can fly. Especially when they live on sea ice. But no-one can tell you any animal will go extinct just because of what we know today. Animals surprise us in many ways we never thought possible.
Where do Emperor Penguins occur?
This is the wholehearted meaning behind How to Survive the Next 100 Years: Lessons from Nature. It’s the only book in the world that provides a nuanced view of nature’s reality, as an antidote to the type of catastrophising rhetoric we hear all the time in the media. It’s not just a string of hope stories, it embodies real change and reveals the side of the coin we’ve flipped, that’s hidden from us by constant catastrophising.
‘How to Survive the Next 100 Years: Lessons from Nature is required reading for that person whose life’s work or passion involves the environment, in any way. For them, it could be a game-changer.’ – Emma Young, WA Today, Book Fiend
Further, when it comes to wildlife, we know almost nothing. To reset the balance, here are a few of countless examples where wildlife surprises.
European Spoonbills
In the 1990s in Europe, spoonbills (a waterbird) were rare and isolated to a few colonies. When they were destroyed the birds spread out to create new colonies all over Europe and numbers increased rapidly. No-one anticipated this.
As this paper in Marine Ornithology, says [1] development of new seabird colonies is even rarer and ‘prospective breeders are reluctant to pioneer new colonies even when they may suffer substantial costs by recruiting into large established colonies.’ This is because it makes more evolutionary sense to settle in the place your parents successfully raised you. It provides more certainty for finding food. Therefore, in the short term, seabird colonies will become bigger and bigger, without necessarily reaching the full carrying capacityThe population of animals that a steady-state ecosystem can support. It’s the number that results when total mortality equals total birth-rate. Populations aren’t evenly-distributed to carrying capacity depends on there being both population sources and populations sinks that balance each other out. This is why it can never be said that “animals can move somewhere else”. Loss of critical habitat More of the larger environment.
The paper goes on to say, however, that ‘new colonies become highly attractive to prospective breeders and grow rapidly.’
Australasian Gannets
In the late 1990s in Melbourne, Australia, sardines collapsed and Australasian Gannet colonies failed to breed for at least two seasons. Numbers of birds declined. Then they switched to an alternative prey source (which may itself have become more abundance, due to loss of sardines), changed their foraging range and numbers came back stronger than ever.
Purple Emperors
For many years, Purple Emperor butterflies in the UK were thought to be confined to the tops of oak trees in isolated woodlands. The species became abundant in low-growing sallows on Knepp Farm following rewilding. It has completely rewritten the rule book regarding this species.
Glossy Black Cockatoos
Glossy Black Cockatoos in western Victoria, Australia, were never seen outside of a small region of the state. Following catastrophic bush fires, the birds migrated hundreds of kilometres to new habitat. Similarly, mapping of this species in NSW based on historic sightings data, was found to be almost entirely incorrect in a project I ran. Local experts knew them from areas beyond that.
Reasons to be cautiously optimistic
Just because animals occupy a certain niche today, does not necessarily mean they can’t adapt to new opportunities and survive, even in smaller numbers. Further, even if populations decline, we can still capitalise on wildlife’s ability to restore natural processes (number of animals is a terrible metric for understanding their importance yet most conservation science is based on it).
Ecosystems are so complex, one might as well be talking to an astrologist when discussing anything about animal life and the future. Perhaps that’s the point. Why would media question the qualifications of someone with letters in front of their names? How could we expect them to realise when the scientists they are interviewing, know as little as they do? It’s how this type of simple linear thinking seeps in. It’s dangerously inexact:
- Emperor Penguins live on ice.
- Ice is forecast to disappear.
- Therefore, Emperor Penguins will go extinct.
This could be true but also untrue. There are powerful adaptive mechanisms that come into play after changes occur. There are also alternative scenarios we can look forward to, if we enable people to imagine different possibilities. The question I am increasingly preoccupied with is: what happens when we give airtime to people suffering from chronic anxiety? The answer might be: catastrophising, followed by mental shutdown and the inability to act.
David Robson, author of the aforementioned BBC article recommends: ‘keeping a tally of how often you have been ready to jump to the worst conclusion, when the ultimate outcome turned out to be far brighter than you had started to imagine.’
What we really need now, most of all, are leaders with vision and foresight. People who are dogmatic when it comes to our opportunity to enact change and who understand the sheer power of nature to support those endeavours. Leaders who can empathise with challenges while motivating community support.
What we don’t need is scientists and media catastrophising.
Reference
- Kildaw, S. D.; Irons, D. B.; Nysewander, D. R.; and Buck, C. L. (2005) “Formation and Growth of New Seabird Colonies: the Significance of Habitat Quality,” Marine Ornithology: Vol. 33 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. http://doi.org/10.5038/2074-1235.33.1.640 Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/marine_ornithology/vol33/iss1/7
