Rebooting Humanity: The most pressing environmental issues to address (Planetary Boundaries)

“There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth
as if it were a business in liquidation.”

Herman Daly

In the last chapter called Three Types of Actions, the second dimension was to address “life sustaining systems and practices.” But what are those, exactly?

Planetary Boundaries

The Stockholm Resilience Center developed a useful way of thinking about this called Planetary Boundaries. The green area in the ‘radar graph’ shows the safe zone of human intervention. Yellow is worrisome and orange is way out of bounds. There are some boundaries for which have no good data so those are shown in gray.

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.66e0efc517643c2b8109ac/1607769322818/planetary-boundaries-cover-1620.jpg

The results may surprise you. At the time this chart was created (2015), the climate was at 390 parts per million of carbon dioxide and in 2022, we were at 421 ppm, so that issue is getting worse and deservedly has gotten a lot of attention.

But look at Nitrogen and Phosphorus (N and P under Biogeochemical Flows), largely a function of industrial agriculture, and under Biosphere Integrity, what is described on other graphs as Genetic Diversity (E/MSY, the extinction rate over the background extinction rate), is closely linked to Land-System Change and Climate Change.

This chart may help you identify what the most pressing environmental issues are. Of course, each region will have differences. In our desert, for example, Freshwater Use has to be a focus.

Here’s a TEDTalk (18 min) about the framework.

Discussion questions

Which of the planetary boundaries are most important to address in your region? Pick 1-3. Who’s working on those issues? How might you help? (For example, you might donate to a non-profit, get involved with their service work, create a presentation you can share with others.)

What other planetary boundaries are important drivers to the priority issues you chose in the question above? For example, is land use, especially development or agriculture, a major driver of freshwater use? How could you turn those activities from a negative to a positive?