It is not very often that we get credible ecological news that is not full of bad news and projections. Well, I am glad to say that the following is a recent study that actually suggests that humans have not lost the race yet. Yes we are on our way towards catastrophic outcomes but we are not there yet and interestingly enough we can avoid the worst outcome if we are smart enough to change our ways and work meaningfully towards redemption.
The Stockholm Resilience Center, at Stockholm University is self described as a center of Research for Governance of Social-Ecological Systems. The Centre released a few months ago a major study undertaken by 28 world renown scientists in which they have established a new area in planetary management. Their first study describes nine planetary boundaries (listed at the bottom of this entry) that they believe humanity must not cross . The study goes on to say that human activity has thus far resulted in breaching three of these boundaries (the stared ones)but not the other six.
We are currently living in the geologic era known as the Holocene which started around 10,000 years ago. As we all know, it was during the Holocene that agriculture was developed, civilization prospered and industrialization became the norm. But unfortunately we are entering the Anthropocene, a new geological age in which human activities have grown as to form a major threat to the health of the earth.
Will we have the wisdom to adopt the right policies and change our behavior so as to avoid catastrophy? Yes we still can do that but time is quickly running out.
The nine Planetary Boundaries:
1 Strategic ozone layer
2 Biodiversity
3 Chemical Dispersion
4 Climate Change ***
5 Ocean Acidification ***
6 Freshwater consumption & the global hydrological cycle
7 Land System Change
8 Nitrogen & Phosphorus inputs to the biosphere & ocean ***
9 Atmospheric aerosol loading
*** Transgressed boundary.
2 comments:
Its good to see that we have not crossed all the major boundries yet and that there still is a chance to turn things around. I would be interested to see the data that was used in the formation of boundries and where we currently stand not only for the planetary limits we have crossed, but the ones we have yet to reach. Understading how close we have come based off true data, minus the projecting aspect of the article(we know discount rate affects this dramatically), to really reaching our capacity. Entering into the Anthropocene era will mark a dark day in humanity, but if we do reach it then I hope not to stay there for as long as we did in the Holocene era. 10,000 years is a long time to be abusing the Earth.
Field experiments on the natural and chemical dispersion of 10 artificial oil spills in the North Sea led to the remarkable conclusion that spraying an oil slick with chemical dispersant did not enhance the natural dispersion process. There has been a noticeable increasing awareness of the utility of chemical dispersants as a viable means to minimize damage from oil spills. Prior reluctance to consider chemical dispersion in a more positive perspective was basically due to two concerns - toxicity and effectiveness.
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