{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreif3mbo2wtwnvm5wktw22hnbvvcigxogz7txugdxtnuozi3fvbr2dy",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:ha7wpngv4f2qwrk5hta4ktbb/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhdhzjzafep2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreihgdq3y5zvdjraiffscd5zi2tmklxdn4th2zhwr366vreqvps5kn4"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 194376
  },
  "path": "/columnists/2026/03/18/environmentalism-western-monarch-butterflies-extinction-ben-jealous",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-18T11:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://chicago.suntimes.com",
  "textContent": "<p>Spring arrives this week, and the world feels alive again.</p><p>Trees fill out. Birds return. The air softens. It is the season when nature tells us life is coming back.</p><p>But this spring also arrives with a number most Americans have barely heard.</p><p>This winter, scientists counted just <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-01-30/monarch-butterfly-populations-at-historic-lows-across-west-coast-new-normal\" target=\"_blank\" >12,260 western monarch butterflies</a> along the California coast. In 1997, the first formal count found roughly 1.2 million. In 2022, the count was <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https://xerces.org/press/western-monarch-count-tallies-over-330000-butterflies\" target=\"_blank\" >335,479</a>. That means the western monarch population today is about 1% of what it was a generation ago — and only about 4% of what it was four years ago.</p><p>You do not need advanced science to understand that.</p><div class=\"RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement\" data-module data-align-center><a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"module-d60000\" name=\"module-d60000\"></a> <div class=\"RichTextSidebarModule-title\">Columnist </div> <div class=\"RichTextModule-items RichTextBody\">Columnist</div> </div><p>You only need subtraction. And yet most Americans have heard almost nothing about it.</p><p>That silence says something important about how environmentalism changed.</p><p>There was a time when the country knew these stories.</p><p>When bald eagles were disappearing, the news was everywhere. Environmentalists shouted it from the rooftops until the whole country knew. People rallied. Laws changed. The birds came back.</p><p>When whales were being hunted toward extinction, the world knew. Environmentalists raised the alarm again. People rallied. Hunting slowed. Many whale populations began to recover.</p><p>For years, environmentalism asked people to protect what they loved.</p><p>It was a movement built less on fear than on love — on the simple belief that some things were worth saving before they were gone.</p><p>Thirty-five years ago, <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https://news.gallup.com/poll/190916/americans-identification-environmentalists-down.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" >78% of Americans</a> said they considered themselves environmentalists. Around that same time, western monarchs still numbered in the low millions.</p><p>Then the movement began speaking more and more about climate change. The science behind that shift was necessary and important. But the public language changed too.</p><p>Instead of simple subtraction, we asked people to think more and more in terms of carbon concentrations, atmospheric models and long-range projections built from advanced physics.</p><p>At the same time, we talked less about habitat loss, species decline and the wild things people could still see disappearing.</p><p>We thought we could make the conversation more complex and still hold everyone.</p><p>We did not.</p><p>Today, the share of Americans who identify as environmentalists has fallen to 41%. Meanwhile, the losses keep growing.</p><p>Scientists say species are now disappearing at more than 100 times the normal rate. That is why many believe we are entering the early stage of a sixth mass extinction.</p><p>What makes this one different from the five before it is simple: nature caused the others. This one is being driven by us, mostly through habitat destruction, along with overuse, pollution, invasive species and climate change.</p><p>We still need to talk about climate change. It is real and urgent.</p><p>But if we want to build a stronger movement, we also need to talk again in the language that has always moved people most.</p><p>Environmentalism first became powerful by appealing to people’s love for wild things and wild places.</p><p>People still care deeply about wild things and wild places. People are still moved more by love than fear.</p><p>And subtraction is still the math most people understand best.</p><p><i>Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and former president and CEO of the NAACP.</i></p><div class=\"RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement\" data-module data-align-center><a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"module-b20000\" name=\"module-b20000\"></a> <div class=\"RichTextModule-items RichTextBody\">Send letters to <a class=\"Link\" href=\"mailto:letters@suntimes.com\" target=\"_blank\" >letters@suntimes.com</a>. More about <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https://chicago.suntimes.com/submitting-opinion-and-letters\" >how to submit here</a>.</div> </div><p></p>",
  "title": "As spring nears, let's renew our enthusiasm for environmentalism",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-18T11:00:22.899Z"
}