A team of global scientists assessed that seven of nine so-called “planetary boundaries” — processes that regulate Earth’s stability, resilience and ability to sustain life — had now been crossed.
Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, freshwater depletion, overuse of agricultural fertilisers, and the release of artificial chemicals and plastics into the environment were all already deep in the red.
In their new report, the scientists said all seven were “showing trends of increasing pressure — suggesting further deterioration and destabilisation of planetary health in the near future."
(Report can be found at https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/)
Apologies for being an american late to the party; but how can these boundaries be principled? Why are there only 9? I notice that the 2 we haven’t crossed are crises that globalization more-or-less addressed a long while ago (CFCs?). Why is the global report supported by exactly 2 organizations (both of which are new to me; though I see that they claim large staffs).
According to Wikipedia, the planetary boundaries -concept has been around since 2009, with some renaming and one variable change (“chemical pollution” to “novel entities”. The original Nature (feature) paper that I dug up doesn’t describe the methodology, but that it hasn’t faced major criticism so far would suggest it’s pretty valid for the kind of tool that it is.
Clearly we need more boundaries. Then only a few of them will be crossed. Checkmate, Mother Earth.