fred first's List: EcoLimits

• • he nine areas that are most in need of planetary boundaries are climate change, biodiversity loss, excess nitrogen and phosphorus production, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global consumption of freshwater, change in land use for agriculture, air pollution, and chemical pollution.

• his is an entirely new situation for humanity. In the past when we fouled our local environment, we could move to someplace else. As human population has grown, these short-term solutions are no longer viable. Furthermore, the impacts of our presence were not usually felt beyond our immediate surroundings. This is also no longer the case. The global environment has provided an especially accommodating environment over the past 12,000 years for humanity to develop and thrive.⁴ But the world population is no longer small, spread out, and technologically limited.

   

  Does our planet have boundaries regarding the amount of growth it can absorb? We believe it does and that certain preconditions must be set that acknowledge and respect those boundaries.
• The past 12,000 years or so is a period defined by geologists as the Holocene, an epoch in which global average temperature has been remarkably stable and during which time agriculture developed, followed by the appearance of ever larger settlements and the development of complex civilizations in Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and the Mediterranean region.
• Humanity is fundamentally changing the Earth’s physical climate,⁶ overwhelming its capacity to provide ecosystem services, homogenizing its biological diversity,⁷ and substantially modifying the global cycles of key elements like nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus.⁸ We are indeed passing through the exit door of the Holocene and into the unknown world of the Anthropocene.
• second example is biodiversity loss, which does occur naturally and would continue to some degree without human interference. However, the rate of animal extinction has skyrocketed in the postindustrial age. Compared with fossil records, today the rate of extinction per species is 100–1,000 times more than what could be considered natural. Human activities are to blame: urban and agricultural development, sprawl, increases in wildfires that destroy habitat, introduction of new species into environments, and the exploitation of land for human consumption—such as the destruction of the rainforests. We believe another 30 percent of wildlife will come under the threat of extinction this century if change is not made. The dangers of biodiversity loss go beyond nostalgia for certain animals: entire ecosystems rely on certain threatened species.
• aying within the “planetary playing field” does not assure that humanity will thrive, or even survive, but straying outside the playing field will make it very difficult for humanity to thrive under any circumstances. Implementing the concept of planetary boundaries presents huge challenges for global governance and institutions.
• However, we must now also focus on the global scale explicitly—in addition to and not at the expense of the many environmental issues we still need to solve at smaller scales. A global solution to the sustainability challenge is thus a prerequisite for living sustainably at local and regional scales.
• There are cascading impacts, in which transgressing one boundary can have implications for other boundaries. For example, converting the Amazon rainforest to a grassland or savanna could influence atmospheric circulation globally and ultimately affect water resources in East Asia through changes in rainfall.
• As a practical solution for living sustainably in the modern era, the planetary boundaries approach raises important questions and opportunities for governance and institutions, even to the point of challenging the concept of national sovereignty.

  • Treading on national sovereignty and procreational choice and affluence-lifestyle and personal vs public good--makes this a tough sell.
• Dealing with uncertainties.

  • The general scientific ignorance of powerful, greedy people at the top makes uncertainty of this kind a deal-killer for the unwashed masses and those who will believe anything Walmart tells them.
• Ultimately, there will need to be an institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual countries to ensure that the planetary boundaries are respected. In effect, such an institution, acting on behalf of humanity as a whole, would be the ultimate arbiter of the myriad trade-offs that need to be managed as nations and groups of people jockey for economic and social advantage.

  • Anything at the GLOBAL level that involves "leftist" science is not going to go down well with the RIGHT. 
• Effective solutions for living sustainably in the postindustrial age require innovative frameworks and implementation strategies. Rather than tackling these global-scale problems one by one, as we are attempting for climate change, we need a far more holistic and integrated approach. The planetary boundaries framework provides such an approach.

  • Solving for just ONE boundary will not be adequate; they work synergistically (positive and negative)

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• An economic transformation to rival the Industrial Revolution is on its way – and this time nature will be properly valued, predict John Elkington and Alejandro Litovsky
• The focus of his work, and that of a growing number of economists, is the creation in the coming decades of what we call the Biosphere Economy. The evidence suggests that this will be as profound in its impacts as the original Industrial Revolution, except this time the economy will be working with the grain of the biosphere, rather than against it.
• Whether we like or not, whether we plan for it or not, we are entering the Biosphere Economy – a future where business and politics increasingly take account of natural capital, bridging the gap between man-made assets and nature’s ecological infrastructures, which underpin our economies and societies. This Biosphere Economy is moving on from “intangible” ecosystem services such as naturally produced water, soil and clean air, to identify a set of tangible issues for business. And, in the process, it is shifting the focus from business “externalities” such as pollution, deforestation and resource degradation, to a re-consideration of market and corporate valuation mechanisms
• a growing number of global business leaders sense that disruptive change is coming. Earlier in 2010, for example, the chief executives of 29 global companies involved in WBCSD – including Alcoa, Boeing, Syngenta, Sony, E.ON, Procter & Gamble, Duke Energy, Toyota, Infosys and Volkswagen – unveiled their “Vision 2050” report. They forecast a future in which market pricing accurately reflects the ecological costs of doing business.

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• At its current pace of consumption humankind will need, by 2030, a second globe to satisfy its voracious appetites and absorb all its waste, the report calculated.

   

  Earth's seven billion denizens -- nine billion by mid-century -- are using more water, cutting down more forests and eating more fish than Nature can replace, it said.

   

  At the same time, we are disgorging more CO2, pollutants and chemical fertilizers than the atmosphere, soil and oceans can soak up without severely disrupting the ecosystems that have made our planet such a comfortable place for homo sapiens to live.

   

  Counting down from January 1, the date when human activity exceeds its budget -- dubbed "Earth Overshoot Day" -- had receded by about three days each year since 2001

• This year, researchers estimate that the equivalent of Earth's resource quota will be depleted on September 27.

   

  "That's like spending your annual salary three months before the year is over, and eating into savings year after year," Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel said in a statement
• "Overshoot" is driven by three factors: how much we consume, the global population, and how much Nature can produce

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