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Planetary Boundaries

CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Hothouse Earth’ and possible trajectories for humanity and the planet

24th September 2019

Ayushi Uppal writes: While the concept of Anthropocene remains contested, there is consensus on the human-led changes to the climate and the need for intervention. Humanity must create a pathway from a possible ‘Hothouse earth’ to a ‘Stabilized Earth’ state, where human activities create biogeophysical feedbacks that sustain the Earth System within the planetary threshold….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Anthropocene now: influential panel votes to recognise Earth’s new epoch

7th June 2019

From NewsClick: The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a panel that consists of 34 scientists and academics, has voted in favour of making the Anthropocene a formally defined geological unit within the official geological time scale. The term ‘Anthropocene’ denotes the current geological period, where many conditions and processes on Earth are altered by impacts of human activities….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Arctic is thawing so fast scientists are losing their measuring tools

4th June 2019

By Dahr Jamail: Permafrost, or frozen soil in the Arctic is now thawing so fast that scientists are literally losing their measuring equipment. This is due to the fact that instead of there being just a few centimeters of thawing each year, now several meters of soil can become destabilized in a matter of days….

ALTERNATIVES

Can the economy grow forever?

26th May 2019

To keep this kind of growth going, we need to tap more resources, which is beyond the Earth’s capacity. Till now the growth was possible because we thought resources are abundant. But today we know that we will have to experience a serious crisis in the next half century, depending upon how we use resources….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The IPCC systematically underestimates climate risks: here’s the proof

8th October 2018

A Special Report on Global Warming has been released today by the IPCC, considered the international benchmark on climate change. Ahead of it, Donald Brown reviewed three independent studies which show that climate change is a much more urgent and serious threat than indicated by past IPCC reports, and examines the ethical questions they raise….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The study on climate-collapse they don’t want you to read – yet

30th September 2018

A research-paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by an academic journal, citing the emotional impact that it might have on readers. The paper offers a new framing to make sense of the disaster we face, called “deep adaptation.” It has now been released online by the author, Prof. Jem Bendell….

ALTERNATIVES

Science in the Anthropocene: The emerging field of Planetary Health

1st August 2018

It’s no longer possible to separate the health of the planet from the health of its people. Disease patterns are changing as the climate does, and human health is at risk from loss of biodiversity, depleted water supplies, environmental toxins, and collapsing food systems. From this realisation has come a new research field: planetary health….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.

26th July 2018

From Grist Magazine: It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of civilization, and the world is being battered by extreme weather events – unprecedented heatwaves in japan, wildfires in Greece and the Arctic Circle, and flooding in Philippines and Laos, where a dam was washed away, forcing thousands to flee….

CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Tail Risk’: What the scientists are not telling you about climate change

24th June 2018

Kerry Emanuel writes: There are strong cultural biases against discussion of ‘tail risk’ in climate science; particularly the accusation of “alarmism”. Does the dictum to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” not apply to climate scientists? If we omit discussion of tail risk, are we really telling the whole truth?…

Bookshelf

Book review: The Water Will Come

24th May 2018

‘As the waters rise,’ Jeff Goodell writes, ‘millions of people will be displaced, many of them in poor countries, creating generations of climate refugees that will make today’s Syrian war refugee crisis look like a high school drama production.’ There’s no longer any doubt that the rise in global sea levels will reshape human civilisation….

CLIMATE CRISIS

How much ‘carbon budget’ is left to limit global warming to 1.5C?

18th April 2018

Limiting global warming to 1.5C requires strictly limiting the total amount of carbon emissions between now and the end of the century. However, there is more than one way to calculate this allowable amount of additional emissions, known as the “carbon budget”. In this article, Carbon Brief assesses nine new carbon budget estimates released recently….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Inside Antarctica: the continent whose fate will affect millions

1st April 2018

From Financial Times: Antarctica is changing fast, including sections of the massive ice sheet that covers it. This holds so much water that if it ever melted completely, global sea levels would rise by nearly 60m. The race to understand Antarctica has become more urgent. Also watch, the documentary ‘The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning.’…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Red alert: Runaway climate change begins as glacier melt passes point of no return

24th March 2018

This latest news immediately brings some questions to mind: Does this mean that we should stop working toward mitigating climate change? Should we stop worrying and enjoy mindlessly by indulging ourselves in senseless consumerism? I really don’t know. But what I definitely know is that the window of opportunity to act is closing really fast….

Photo by Chris Jordan depicting actual stomach contents of an albatross in Midway Atoll

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Junk Planet: Is Earth the largest garbage dump in the Universe?

5th March 2018

Robert J. Burrowes writes: Just listing the types of rubbish generated by humans is a staggering task. Nevertheless, I will give you a reasonably comprehensive summary of the types of garbage being generated, the locations into which it’s being dumped and some indication of what’s being done about it and what you can do too….

ALTERNATIVES

Is it possible for everyone to live a good life within our planet’s limits?

12th February 2018

Daniel O’Neill writes: If everyone on Earth were to lead a good life within our planet’s sustainability limits, the level of resources used to meet basic needs would have to be reduced by a factor of two to six times. These are the sobering findings of our research, recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability….

ALTERNATIVES

Why we can no longer shrink from the most urgent conversation on the planet

27th January 2018

Richard Heinberg writes: Many problems are converging at once because society is a complex system, and the challenges we have been discussing are aspects of a systemic crisis. A useful way to frame an integrated understanding of the 21st century survival challenge is this: we humans have overshot Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for our species….

The white rhinoceros, the largest species of rhinoceros, is on the verge of extinction

Conserve/Resist

We’ll never see these animals again

9th October 2017

From Mother Jones: Most scientists now agree that we are experiencing a sixth mass extinction, but unlike before, humans are responsible for this one. Here are some of the highlights from the Red List, the most comprehensive roster of threatened species available, including three that went extinct last year and others to watch out for in 2017….

The 2008 movie 'Wall-E' features a small waste-collecting robot as its protagonist

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Humans are creating a new geological layer of techno-fossils

19th August 2017

From Slate.com: Industrial civilisation’s impact is so massive that it goes way beyond climate change. Earth scientists now suggest that it is creating a distinct geological layer made of ‘technofossils’. The scale of our stuff is so gargantuan, that it is throwing off the quite robust balance of our natural systems—that’s how powerful it is….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Permafrost – the Arctic’s sleeping giant: What is it, and why does it matter?

12th August 2017

What is permafrost? What happens when permafrost thaws? This animation, based on research by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute, answers these questions. Understanding this problem, and its connection to global climate change, is of vital importance at a time when the thawing Arctic tundra is creating massive craters and bringing back diseases like anthrax….

ALTERNATIVES

Bernie Sanders and Al Gore on solving the climate crisis

26th July 2017

From The Guardian: In 2006, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore triggered a worldwide debate about climate change with his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Now, he’s back with a rousing follow-up for the age of climate change denial under Trump. Fellow climate champion and U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently discussed the film with Gore….