These Planetary Boundary papers are like the earth’s control board – and they’ve been flashing red lights for decades. Houston – we have a problem. Planetary Boundaries can impact on regional boundaries and also the other way around. If reading long articles online is not your thing – just start with the first few videos.
- Potsdam Institute talks – essential viewing!
- Stockholm Resilience Centre – summarised in interactive graph
- Even “Big Insurance” measures planetary boundaries – October 2023
- 2005: UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
- 2005: Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond summaries the threats in “Collapse”, now a free book
- The original warnings started way back with The Limits to Growth in 1972
- Hope in the face of this?
Potsdam Institute talks – essential viewing!
In 2010 Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute introduced their new work on Planetary Boundaries. But unfortunately this TED talk is only low-res. (Watch in a smaller window on your computer?)
Johan also stars in the beautifully produced Netflix Series “Breaking Boundaries” (trailer here). If you have Netflix – close this page and go watch it right now!
If not, here is a brief introduction to Planetary Boundaries (PB’s) from TIME magazine in 2023.
(6 minutes.) Really – each of the PB’s almost needs as much study as climate change to understand. A movie introduction can help.
His 2020 TED update – 7 minutes
Here he is in June 2023 speaking for Frontiers – a compelling argument that the climate data shows we cannot go past 1.5 degrees. (38 minutes)
If you wish to dive deeper into his material, you can try his 2015 paper for Science, and read the article from front to back, or read the Planetary Boundaries Wiki which then links to the individual boundaries as their own wikis. The basic introduction from the wiki reads:
Planetary boundaries are a framework to describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system. Beyond these limits, the environment may not be able to self-regulate anymore. This would mean the Earth system would leave the period of stability of the Holocene, in which human society developed.[2][3][4] Crossing a planetary boundary comes at the risk of abrupt environmental change. The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change. According to the framework, “transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-scale to planetary-scale systems.”[2]
Stockholm Resilience Centre – summarised in interactive graph
This centre’s findings are similar. An interactive graph helps summarise the various sectors – click a sector to learn more.
Even “Big Insurance” measures planetary boundaries – October 2023
2005: UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. Initiated in 2001, the objective of the MA was to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human well-being. The MA has involved the work of more than 1,360 experts worldwide. Their findings, contained in five technical volumes and six synthesis reports, provide a state-of-the-art scientific appraisal of the condition and trends in the world’s ecosystems and the services they provide (such as clean water, food, forest products, flood control, and natural resources) and the options to restore, conserve or enhance the sustainable use of ecosystems.
What is the Millennium Assessment?
Their findings?
“A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years.”
United Nations Millennium Assessment
2005: Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond summaries the threats in “Collapse”, now a free book
Jared Diamond won the Pulitzer for “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” He conclusively proved that rich local resources (including easily domesticated animals and grains) accelerated the rise of early cities and civilisations. This is also one of my favourite arguments against racism, showing that various people groups were not smarter, just luckier. Early villages thrived when they were geographically placed in environments that were rich in biological and mineral resources. The Pulitzer was well deserved, and eventually PBS made the TV mini-series.
His next major work analysed the other side of the very same equation — how societies failed when they did not respect the limits of their environments and resources. Indeed, even the title of the book “Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed” drew complaints from more conservative critics.
However some celebrity scientists have praised his work. Global Warming author and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery gave “Collapse” the highest praise in Science, saying[1]
Indeed, the whole book is now a free PDF which can be downloaded from CPOR (the University of Pennsylvania’s Crisis Preparedness course.)
In May 2007 Diamond gave a presentation for Conservation International at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. His thinking seems to have crystallised and condensed the information in “Collapse” as he summarised the risks to our economic prosperity — and even civilisation itself — into 12 key points. Scientific American was there: listen to their podcast or read the key paragraphs below.
People are worried now… …People have good reasons to be concerned. In the past there have about 8 different ways by which human societies hammered environments by destroying habitats, exterminating species, overfishing, deforestation, soil erosion, introducing exotic pest species, and other ways. Well all of these old ways of hammering the environment are continuing, but now we also have 4 new environmental problems. Namely, releasing toxic chemicals into the environment, Global Warming caused by humans, bumping up against the photosynthetic ceiling, and energy problems…. Combinations of these old problems dragged down the most advances societies in both hemispheres in the past, and they are threatening to do it again today.
All of these dozen problems are like time bombs with fuses just a few decades long, because world societies are already on a non-sustainable course, and our trajectories for each of these problems will run out in a few decades if we don’t change our course.
So you can be sure that every one of these problems I’ve mentioned will get resolved in the coming decades, and that means within the lifetimes of those of you here under the age of 40. Either we are going to resolve these problems in pleasant ways of our choice, by our solving our problems of energy, and deforestation and toxic waste and so on, or else the problems are going to resolve themselves in unpleasant ways not of our choice, through the consequences of our failing to solve the problems.
Scientific American June 2007
The original warnings started way back with The Limits to Growth in 1972
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book about the computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth with finite resource supplies...
…Five variables were examined in the original model. These variables are: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion. The authors intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables under three scenarios. They noted that their projections for the values of the variables in each scenario were predictions “only in the most limited sense of the word,” and were only indications of the system’s behavioral tendencies. Two of the scenarios saw “overshoot and collapse” of the global system by the mid to latter part of the 21st century, while a third scenario resulted in a “stabilized world.”
Limits to Growth wiki
If you read the 35 year review by the CSIRO, you’ll see that we are still pretty much on track for massive societal collapse mid century!
Hope in the face of this?
I have hope. It took a long time to get here, but things are starting to happen fast. Johan sees it as well. He calls this our “Montreal moment”. He says we banned CFC’s to save the ozone layer because there was an already an affordable alternative. For decades scientists have been warning about climate change, and not a lot has happened. Why? The expense! There was no viable alternative at the time. But now there is! It’s taken decades of subsidies to bring the costs down, but now they have wind and solar are on a doubling curve. He says they’re doubling every 5.5 years! (Solar doubles every 4 years – but wind is a bit further behind and drags the average of the 2 back.) They are cheaper than coal – even after factoring the storage costs and longer transmission lines!
Now that we have an affordable alternative – things are happening, and are accelerating. Us activists have just got to fight oil lobbying and stay involved in conservation efforts that maintain life. It’s that simple, and that hard.
Eclipse Now 
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