But increasingly scientists have put the blame on people, who exacerbated a problem caused by the life-cycle of the high altitude bamboo that is the panda's staple diet.
Meanwhile, in the US, still the world's only hyper-power, the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primaries is a shameless hate-monger who exacerbates every fear that lurks in the depths of the American psyche, and, incredibly, proposes to keep Muslims out of the country he aspires to govern.
Ryan Braun, it seems, is just another rich man caught breaking the rules who exacerbated his problem by denials and obfuscation before finally offering an unconvincing apology.
Both are suspicious of Abe, who exacerbated tensions with nationalist rhetoric and a visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine early in his current administration.
The centrepiece of the day was the world's most upsetting school play, a re-enactment of what happened in those terrible months complete with a field of dead victims and an educational prologue, in which eight Russian soldiers played the parts of the Belgian colonists who exacerbated divisions between the Hutu majority who turned on the minority Tutsi population and their moderate Hutu fellows.
It's a raw-looking film, but, even more, a raw-feeling one — this story of three young women friends in Brooklyn who lovingly exacerbate each other's misery.
It has English-speaking Christian troops who might exacerbate Mali's ethnic and religious tensions, and its heavy-handed attempts to counter its own Boko Haram extremists have so far failed.
It is accepted that some aspects of the analysis may not be generalisable to the subgroup of patients who never exacerbate.
Here, then, is a (far from exhaustive) list of those who might be considered most culpable – who caused, exacerbated or failed to prevent the worst downturn in the global economy since the 1930s.
