THERE IS NO PLANET 'B'
Earth is 'really quite sick now' and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says
Earth is 'really quite sick now' and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says© Provided by The Canadian Press
Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that's losing its natural areas, but for well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.
The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.
The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.
Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while climate was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the Swedish group said.
The study found “hotspots” of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and much of Brazil, Mexico, China and some of the U.S. West — much of it from climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don’t meet the criteria for freshwater safety, scientists said as an example.
“We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries,” said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at the University of Washington.
If planet Earth just got an annual check-up, similar to a person's physical, “our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick right now and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems and this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth,” Earth Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference.
It’s not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, including its use of coal, oil and natural gas and the way it treats the land and water, the scientists said.
But “we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these,” said study lead author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
“This is a compelling and provocative paper – scientifically sound in methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into irreversible states,” Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment said in an email. She wasn’t part of the study.
The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each environmental category, both for what’s safe for the planet and for the point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the researchers termed a justice issue.
Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up “a safety fence’’ outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal.
Rockstrom and other scientists have attempted in the past this type of holistic measuring of Earth’s various interlocking ecosystems. The big difference in this attempt is that scientists also looked at local and regional levels and they added the element of justice.
The justice part includes fairness between young and old generations, different nations and even different species. Frequently, it applies to conditions that harm people more than the planet.
An example of that is climate change.
The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it hasn’t crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t being hurt.
“What we are trying to show through our paper is that event at 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage taking place,” Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people exposed to extreme hot temperatures.
The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn’t been breached, but the “just” boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been.
“Sustainability and justice are inseparable,” said Stanford environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. “Unsafe conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth’s area to be unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in and near poor and vulnerable communities.”
Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environment health professor and dean of George Washington University’s public health school, said the study was “kind of bold,” but she wasn’t optimistic that it would result in much action.
___
Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press
Earth is 'really quite sick now' and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says© Provided by The Canadian Press
Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that's losing its natural areas, but for well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.
The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.
The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.
Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while climate was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the Swedish group said.
The study found “hotspots” of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and much of Brazil, Mexico, China and some of the U.S. West — much of it from climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don’t meet the criteria for freshwater safety, scientists said as an example.
“We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries,” said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at the University of Washington.
If planet Earth just got an annual check-up, similar to a person's physical, “our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick right now and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems and this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth,” Earth Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference.
It’s not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, including its use of coal, oil and natural gas and the way it treats the land and water, the scientists said.
But “we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these,” said study lead author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
“This is a compelling and provocative paper – scientifically sound in methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into irreversible states,” Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment said in an email. She wasn’t part of the study.
The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each environmental category, both for what’s safe for the planet and for the point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the researchers termed a justice issue.
Related video: Earth Has Reached Ecological 'Danger Zone,' Study Warns
(Money Talks News) Duration 1:30 View on Watch
Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up “a safety fence’’ outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal.
Rockstrom and other scientists have attempted in the past this type of holistic measuring of Earth’s various interlocking ecosystems. The big difference in this attempt is that scientists also looked at local and regional levels and they added the element of justice.
The justice part includes fairness between young and old generations, different nations and even different species. Frequently, it applies to conditions that harm people more than the planet.
An example of that is climate change.
The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it hasn’t crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t being hurt.
“What we are trying to show through our paper is that event at 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage taking place,” Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people exposed to extreme hot temperatures.
The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn’t been breached, but the “just” boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been.
“Sustainability and justice are inseparable,” said Stanford environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. “Unsafe conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth’s area to be unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in and near poor and vulnerable communities.”
Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environment health professor and dean of George Washington University’s public health school, said the study was “kind of bold,” but she wasn’t optimistic that it would result in much action.
___
Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press
May 31,2023
In 2009 scientists identified nine "planetary boundaries" in the Earth system
- Copyright AFP/File Robyn Beck
Marlowe HOOD
By AFP
Published May 31, 2023
Curbing global heating at 1.5 degrees Celsius will avert runaway climate change but not mass suffering in developing nations, a consortium of 50 researchers warned Wednesday.
Some 200 million people in poorer regions will be exposed to unliveable heat, and half a billion will face the destructive ravages of rising seas even if the world meets the more optimistic Paris target of a 1.5C cap, they reported in a major study.
If exposing large swathes of humanity to “significant harm is to be avoided, the just boundary should be set at or below 1C,” the scientists said.
The Earth’s average surface temperature has already risen 1.2C.
These are sobering conclusions because greenhouse gas emissions remain at record levels, and current policies are on track to see 2.7C of warming by century’s end.
We are “putting the stability and resilience of the entire planet at risk,” said Johan Rockstrom, lead author of the new study.
The scientists say atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide must also be cut by a sixth, with the world’s richest one percent emitting twice as much as the poorest 50 percent, the study noted.
Rockstrom is among the originators of the concept of “planetary boundaries” — red lines that must not be crossed.
In 2009 he and colleagues identified nine such boundaries and said we had already stepped outside the safe zone of three: planet-warming gases in the air, accelerating species extinction, and an excess of nitrogen and phosphorus in the environment (mostly from fertiliser).
Today we have breached three more: deforestation, overuse of fresh water, and the omnipresence of synthetic chemicals, including plastics.
– ‘Scientific backbone’ –
Outdoor particle pollution, which shortens more than four million lives every year, could be added this year to the list of our transgressions, and ocean acidification may not be far behind.
“The Earth system is in danger — many tipping elements are about to cross their tipping points,” said co-author Dahe Qin, director of the Chinese Academy of Science’s influential Academic Committee.
The Greenland ice sheet, large swathes of permafrost and the Amazon forest, for example, are approaching points of no return beyond which they will, respectively, lift oceans by metres, release billions of tonnes of CO2 and methane and turn tropical forests to savannah.
Only the restoration of the life-protecting ozone layer — the ninth boundary — is clearly moving in the right direction.
Rockstrom, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and colleagues applied the same yardsticks to measure the limits for a “just” world in which human exposure to harm is minimised.
Besides climate change, they found the tolerable threshold of ambient particle pollution — especially across Asia — must also be lowered compared to the original planetary boundaries schema.
“Justice is a necessity for humanity to live within planetary limits,” said co-author Joyeeta Gupta, a professor at the University of Amsterdam. “We cannot have a safe planet without justice.”
The scientists have proposed the new thresholds as the “scientific backbone” of evolving sustainability standards for government and business.
The study, published in Nature, was supported by the Global Commons Alliance, a coalition of more than 70 research and policy centres, including the World Economic Forum, The Nature Conservancy and Future Earth.
“Nothing less than a just global transformation across all Earth system boundaries is required to ensure human well-being,” the authors concluded.
“Such transformations must be systemic across energy, food, urban and other sectors, addressing the economic, technological, political and other drivers of Earth system change, and ensure access for the poor through reductions and reallocation of resource use.”
Published May 31, 2023
Curbing global heating at 1.5 degrees Celsius will avert runaway climate change but not mass suffering in developing nations, a consortium of 50 researchers warned Wednesday.
Some 200 million people in poorer regions will be exposed to unliveable heat, and half a billion will face the destructive ravages of rising seas even if the world meets the more optimistic Paris target of a 1.5C cap, they reported in a major study.
If exposing large swathes of humanity to “significant harm is to be avoided, the just boundary should be set at or below 1C,” the scientists said.
The Earth’s average surface temperature has already risen 1.2C.
These are sobering conclusions because greenhouse gas emissions remain at record levels, and current policies are on track to see 2.7C of warming by century’s end.
We are “putting the stability and resilience of the entire planet at risk,” said Johan Rockstrom, lead author of the new study.
The scientists say atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide must also be cut by a sixth, with the world’s richest one percent emitting twice as much as the poorest 50 percent, the study noted.
Rockstrom is among the originators of the concept of “planetary boundaries” — red lines that must not be crossed.
In 2009 he and colleagues identified nine such boundaries and said we had already stepped outside the safe zone of three: planet-warming gases in the air, accelerating species extinction, and an excess of nitrogen and phosphorus in the environment (mostly from fertiliser).
Today we have breached three more: deforestation, overuse of fresh water, and the omnipresence of synthetic chemicals, including plastics.
– ‘Scientific backbone’ –
Outdoor particle pollution, which shortens more than four million lives every year, could be added this year to the list of our transgressions, and ocean acidification may not be far behind.
“The Earth system is in danger — many tipping elements are about to cross their tipping points,” said co-author Dahe Qin, director of the Chinese Academy of Science’s influential Academic Committee.
The Greenland ice sheet, large swathes of permafrost and the Amazon forest, for example, are approaching points of no return beyond which they will, respectively, lift oceans by metres, release billions of tonnes of CO2 and methane and turn tropical forests to savannah.
Only the restoration of the life-protecting ozone layer — the ninth boundary — is clearly moving in the right direction.
Rockstrom, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and colleagues applied the same yardsticks to measure the limits for a “just” world in which human exposure to harm is minimised.
Besides climate change, they found the tolerable threshold of ambient particle pollution — especially across Asia — must also be lowered compared to the original planetary boundaries schema.
“Justice is a necessity for humanity to live within planetary limits,” said co-author Joyeeta Gupta, a professor at the University of Amsterdam. “We cannot have a safe planet without justice.”
The scientists have proposed the new thresholds as the “scientific backbone” of evolving sustainability standards for government and business.
The study, published in Nature, was supported by the Global Commons Alliance, a coalition of more than 70 research and policy centres, including the World Economic Forum, The Nature Conservancy and Future Earth.
“Nothing less than a just global transformation across all Earth system boundaries is required to ensure human well-being,” the authors concluded.
“Such transformations must be systemic across energy, food, urban and other sectors, addressing the economic, technological, political and other drivers of Earth system change, and ensure access for the poor through reductions and reallocation of resource use.”
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