Humanity’s struggle to respect Boundaries
Equity and boundaries are something humans struggle to establish and maintain within our own species. Our drive for dominance, greed, and power seems insatiable. Countries in the Global North, especially elites living within these countries, end up with access to resources, power, comfort, and privileges that people in the Global South, especially poorer people, have limited or no access to. Too many people, even within first world nations, end up struggling to meet their basic survival needs.
When it comes to the environment, our drive for dominion spills over onto our treatment of the environment. The global’s north addiction to production, consumption, and economic growth continues to destroy earth and any chance we have of maintaining safety on our planet. Even people who lack access to resources and privilege may take their powerlessness within society out on the natural world.
If we want any chance of survival, we need to treat earth and each other, regardless of our race, gender, status, or class as sentient and deserving of equitable care and protection.
Humanity is crossing Earth’s boundaries, resulting in an environment that is becoming inhospitable to life. A recent report shows that Earth is past its safe limits for humans and that, unless we begin to respect planetary boundaries, we are increasingly at risk of harm and even a major human extinction event.
Planetary boundaries are a set of nine boundaries within which humanity can survive and thrive. Because of human behavior, we have already crossed 7 of these 9 boundaries, harming the ecosystems we rely on for survival.
Human behavior has ended the Holocene epoch, a period of climate stability ideal for supporting life, and pushed us into the Anthropocene epoch. The Anthropocene epoch is a period during which human activity has had a dominant and harmful influence on Earth and pushed climate and environment into a state of instability that threatens the safety and survival of most forms of life on Earth, including humans.
There is still time to reverse our course, but humanity’s window of time to change our behavior is closing. Earth’s tipping points will soon be reached and global heating and ecological collapse will spiral outside of our control.
Read a roundup of the headlines:
The planetary boundaries framework was developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009 to provide what it calls a “science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilise the Earth system at the planetary scale”. This framework identifies a range of nine key ecosystems which, if pushed passed a certain threshold, will dramatically reduce the “safe operating space” for human habitation.
The report notes that at least four of the nine planetary boundaries now seem to be operating outside the safe operating space.
Byline Times, UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries
Scientists note nine planetary boundaries beyond which we can’t push Earth Systems without putting our societies at risk: climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol pollution, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, land-system change, and release of novel chemicals.
Mongabay, The nine boundaries humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable
“The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales…
Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.”
Nature, Safe and just Earth system boundaries
“The earth is already past safe limits for humans as temperature rise, water system disruption and destruction of natural habitats have reached boundaries, a study by a group of the world’s foremost scientists has found.
The research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, identified eight earth system boundaries that included climate, biodiversity, water, natural ecosystems, land use and the effect of fertilisers and aerosols.
Human activities had pushed seven of these boundaries beyond their “safe and just limit” into risk zones that indicate the threat to planetary and human health, it said.
Researchers have traditionally focused on the effects of climate change or biodiversity loss on the planet itself, but the study from the Earth Commission group of scientists marks an attempt by experts to identify the limits after which humans will suffer significant harm.”
Financial Times, Earth past its safe limits for humans, scientists say
“The world is almost certain to experience new record temperatures in the next five years, and temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, scientists have warned.
The breaching of the crucial 1.5C threshold, which scientists have warned could have dire consequences, should be only temporary, according to research from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
However, it would represent a marked acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system, and send the world into “uncharted territory”, the UN agency warned.”
The Guardian, World likely to breach 1.5C climate threshold by 2027, scientists warn
“There is a “significant likelihood” that multiple “tipping points” will be crossed if global temperatures exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, new research suggests.
Tipping points are thresholds that, if crossed, trigger large-scale and potentially irreversible changes in a particular part of the Earth system.
The research, published in Science, reviews hundreds of academic studies to provide an “updated assessment” of climate-related tipping points. The paper identifies 16 tipping “elements” in total and outlines the temperature thresholds, timescales and impacts of each.
The authors warn that rising temperatures may have already pushed the planet beyond a “safe climate state”. They find that five tipping elements – including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and abrupt permafrost thaw – are already within reach.”
Carbon Brief, Global warming above 1.5C could trigger ‘multiple’ tipping points
“Back in the 1980s, when climate research began to really take off, scientists were desperate to retain their credibility as they unravelled the potentially dire consequences of the “new” phenomenon of global warming. Most journalists tiptoed round this topic because no one wanted to lose their reputation by scaremongering. But as the science steadily became overwhelming researchers pushed their conclusions in the face of policymakers.
More and more scientists are now admitting publicly that they are scared by the recent climate extremes, such as the floods in Pakistan and west Africa, the droughts and heatwaves in Europe and east Africa, and the rampant ice melt at the poles.
That is not because an increase in extremes was not predicted. It was always high on the list of concerns alongside longer-term issues such as sea level rise. It is the suddenness and ferocity of recent events that is alarming researchers, combined with the ill-defined threat of tipping points, by which aspects of heating would become unstoppable.”
The Guardian, Why scientists are using the word scary over the climate crisis
“New research finds that billions of people could be forced out of their “human climate niche” as the planet warms. The Guardian reports that current climate pledges – which would see global temperatures rise 2.7C above pre-industrial levels – could push 2 billion people out of their “climate niche”.”
Carbon Brief, Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’
More Reading:
Planetary International, LET’S DISCUSS: The 9 Planetary Boundaries
International Business Times, Climate change can cause a collapse of life on earth, claim scientists
The Times UK, We need to wake up: mankind’s progress could lead to our extinction
Resilience, Faster and faster: The pace of climate change keeps surprising us
The Guardian, Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late