#155_Nine Planetary Boundaries Part Two: Living Beyond the Brink

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 155

The Nine Planetary Boundaries Part Two

Living on the Brink

Welcome back everyone to the Nine Planetary Boundaries Part Two. In last week’s episode we discussed the nine boundaries that we as humans need to operate within in order to live sustainably and thrive. 

It is becoming painfully obvious that due to our rapid population growth and our insatiable appetite for resources, that we are pushing the limits of what our planet can cope with. We have actually crossed the theoretical barrier for 6 of our nine boundaries. 

That being said, what can we do to avoid a disaster. As it turns out, there are actually a lot of things that we can do. But the question is whether humanity as a global community will respond appropriately. So join me for part two of the nine planetary boundaries which is called Living Beyond the Brink. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is E155, which is part two of a discussion about the nine planetary boundaries and this episode is called Living Beyond the Brink

Good News Story of the Week

But first let’s start out with the good news story of the week.  

Did you ever think that wild mushrooms would help to preserve trees? Well that is what is happening in Zambezie province of Mozambique. In this province the locals harvest wild mushrooms as part of normal diet. Conservationist are working with hundreds of local women to commercialize the mushroom harvest with the bigger strategy to protect the forests surrounding Gile National Park. 

The mushrooms are harvested in a 55,600 hectare, or about 137,000 acre buffer zone around the park. After harvesting the mushrooms are cleaned, dried, and transported about 2,000 kilometers, or about 1,200 miles to the capital city and sold in the market. This economic incentive adds an additional reason to protect the trees. The locals have learned that allowing the trees to stand means a bigger mushroom harvest. The project is in it’s third year and there is a clear trend for reduction in tree cutting. 

Protecting the buffer zone around the park is important for rebuilding wildlife populations that were wiped out in the civil war that lasted form 1977 to 1992. 

So there you have it. Yet another sustainable step in rebuilding and protecting our world.  

Living Beyond the Brink

Now the focus of last week’s episode was to first introduce this concept of the nine planetary boundaries. Johan Rockstrom and his team of scientists managed to identify nine essential processes needed to maintain our atmosphere, oceans, and ecosystems in the delicate balance that has allowed humanity to thrive for thousands of years. Not only that but this team managed to quantify those boundaries. 

Now you have to understand that the estimates on these limits to our planetary boundaries that outline specific tipping points are theoretical. The original 2009 report concluded that humanity is already living outside the safe operating zone of at least four planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, P and N cycles and land use. 

Since that time it has become obvious that we have actually exceeded 6 of the nine planetary boundaries with no sign that humanity is willing to change our course. It is at the same time interesting, and unfortunate, that the very hallmarks of our extraordinary success, things such as agriculture and industrialization, are now fundamentally altering many of the very Earth systems responsible for keeping us alive. 

Furthermore, of the six boundaries that we have already passed, climate change and biosphere integrity are consider core planetary boundaries. What this means is that either one of these boundaries on its own could change Earth’s trajectory and endanger humanity. There is enough science today to show that climate change alone could result in our ultimate demise. Similarly, if we continue on our path of mass species extinction, we will reach a tipping point where our entire ecosystems will collapse.

What is even more disturbing is that just like any other local ecosystem, our entire planet’s operating systems interact with one another to form feed back loops. All of our nine planetary boundaries reinforce one another to create stability. Likewise, if any one boundary passes a tipping point it can negatively impact another boundary which in turn influences yet another. In other words, once the stability of Earth’s safe operating systems is disturbed it can tend to promote even further detrimental changes. 

For example, climate change affects ocean acidification which in turn affects biosphere diversity. Fresh water usage affects climate change as well as biodiversity. Land use changes promotes climate change which in turn affects biodiversity, ocean acidification, etc. The disruption of biochemical flows directly impacts biosphere diversity which in turn disrupts the ocean ecosystem and promotes even further climate change. 

So think of it this way. 

It is very easy to see the immediate impact of an oil spill on a local ecosystem. We see it on the news, we are saddened and angered by it and speak of just how unfortunate and unjust these things are and wonder if it could have been prevented. It is much more difficult to appreciate the slow changes in the arctic ecosystems due to global warming. We are not impacted by it nor do we feel the effects of it. We do not see photos and videos on the news of dying sea life laying on the beaches. It happens slowly over many decades, perhaps a century. It occurs on such a slow time scale and the arctic is such an enormous ecosystem that these changes largely go unnoticed. But the point being, these changes have put the arctic ecosystem on a different trajectory. 

But the arctic is a great example of what is happening with the rest of the entire planet just on a much larger scale.  The dynamics of such a large, complex and interconnected system such as what regulates our planet can be thought of in terms of pathways or trajectories that can fluctuate between different steady states.

So imagine for a minute the Earth’s climate taking different pathways or trajectories through time. We already know from geologic records that it is possible for the climate of the entire planet to make significants shifts from one climate state to another. 

We also know that all the possible climate states that could exist on Earth are affected by distinct tipping points. Once the Earth’s climate reaches a tipping point there are a number of complex self reinforcing feedback loops that can either reinforce the current steady state or weaken the current climate state and promote continued change toward a different climate trajectory. Once this happens the planet is locked into a specific climate trajectory that can last centuries if not millennia. 

Climate change, which is the best known example of the nine planetary boundaries, is a perfect example of how this steady state process works. For over 10,000 years the climate on the planet has been stable. This is how human and animal life has been able to thrive. But if we push any one of these systems too far, it loses resilience and can transition, abruptly and irreversibly, into a new self-reinforcing state. This new steady state may not support humanity and would be irreversible on the time scale of anyone alive today. 

Furthermore, the experts in this field are warning us that the proposed limits to these planetary boundaries are just estimates. Realistically we do not know how long we can keep pushing these planetary boundaries before the combined ecological pressures lead to self reinforcing feedback loops that result in irreversible harm. 

If you have been following me for some time, you may remember me saying that sometimes I feel as if humanity is speeding along in a vehicle that passes a sign that says “Danger Cliff Ahead” and we just look at each other and say “Well it hasn’t happened yet!” Imagine now that humanity is completely blindfolded and is speeding along simultaneously toward nine different cliffs. It is just a matter of which cliff we will go off first. And according to the scientific team that first defined the nine planetary boundaries, there is no evidence that humanity is willing to change our own trajectory. 

Experts in this field plainly admit that we are now starting to see some early warning signs that we are reaching a tipping point in the coping capacity of the entire planet. We are now seeing the first red flashing light on the dashboard of our planetary trajectory that is headed toward those nine cliffs. We have now changed the planet so much that we are likely to experience significant impacts and we are starting to see some of these in the last five years. 

For example: 

1)The melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has accelerated substantially since the early 1990s. The Greenland ice sheet lost 3.8 million metric tons of ice between 1992 and 2017. So far this has contributed to raising see levels by 10 mm. This substantial loss of ice suggests that these massive ice deposits have now entered a new state of escalating retreat. These ice sheets contain enough water to raise global sea levels by more than 65 meters or 213 feet. Additionally, the rapid melting of the ice and subsequent influx of fresh water into the ocean could alter global ocean currents and global weather. 

2)The number of climate related natural disasters are increasing at an alarming rate; increased frequency of droughts, heat waves, storms and tropical cyclones. These are resulting in significant economic and health impacts on humanity.

3) Our ecosystems are rapidly degrading. These systems provide an astonishing variety of benefits to humanity. Things such as pollination, pest control, flood regulation, erosion prevention, clean air, clean water, food, biofuels, raw materials and even medicine. 

The Living Planet Index, which is a measure of the state of the world’s biodiversity and is produced by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, shows that mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have declined by 68% since 1970. Additionally the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity has reported that 25% of the plants and animals that they assessed, totaling one million species worldwide, are threatened with extinction. So we are already in the midst of a mass global extinction which threatens the collapse of entire ecosystems. 

4) Land use change due to our agricultural systems, which is the main driver of deforestation, is also promoting further changes. Massive deforestation reduces that amount of water released from plants into the atmosphere. In the Amazon Basin, this transpiration is responsible for a major source of rainfall. 

There are indications that rapid deforestation and global climate change combined are triggering more extreme drought which results in a shift from rain forest to degraded savanna. This shift will have profound implications on the planet. This sort of biome shift would release vast ancient stores of sequestered carbon further exacerbating climate change, leading to more drought and tree die off, and setting up an irreversible vicious cycle.

5) Novel entities being release into the environment represent another core boundary that we are violating. We are releasing hundreds of thousands of chemicals, pollutants, plastics, nanotech particles, and other substances into the environment the affects of which are completely unknown. We already know that many of these substances can affect animal and human fertility.  

6) The melting permafrost in arctic regions, which is rapidly accelerating, releases enormous stores of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, is further promoting climate change.  

As human population continues to grow and our cities spread across the planetary landscape we continue to pollute and consume. We are now seeing feedback loops on top of feedback loops and we continue to get closer to the ceiling of biophysical coping capacity of the entire Earth system. It’s as if the Earth is a bowling ball with too much spin on it that is rapidly careening toward the gutter. And we sit back and look at one another and say, “Well it hasn’t happened yet!” 

I truly think this is one of the most concerning topics I have researched during my time of producing this podcast. And maybe that is because humanity has already changed the planet in so many ways that we will be feeling the affects of our indiscretion for decades to come no matter what we do.

As I stated above it is easy to look at an oil spill and see the local destruction and be angry about it and wonder how it could be prevented. But do you get equally as angry at yourself and all the other commuters as you are driving to work and wondering why we are still using fossil fuels. 

It may seem like an impossible task but we are not past the point of no return. However, we are past the point of easy. Humanity as a whole has some tough decisions to make. And most of us would look at this problem and think it is just too big of a monster for any one of us to do anything about. But, that is not true.

So, what can we do?

What I want to do at this point is to look at each one of these boundaries and give you examples of impactful things you can do as an individual to make a difference. As it turns out, as troublesome as this may appear, there are things we can all do to make a difference. 

1) Fresh water use:

On average each household in the United States using 300 gallons of water everyday. 70% of that use comes from indoors. That is 9,000 gallons a month. On average at the cabin, where there are two adults, two dogs, one cat, numerous chickens and turkeys, and a greenhouse we use approximately 600 gallons of water a month, which is an average of 20 gallons of water a day. So I know from personal experience that each one of us can live well while using significantly less water. 

2) Land system use

One of the primary drivers of deforestation is the cattle industry. The production of beef is by far one of the most devastating farming practices that we have on the planet. To help stave off this problem, reduce your beef consumption. Chicken and pork are a lot more environmentally friendly to produce than beef. Even though I grew up with two working farms in the family, and beef was one of our primary sources of meat, I have still managed to reduce my beef consumption by 75% over the last three years. So, I know it is possible. 

3) Biosphere integrity:

Go back and listen to E144 How to Turn Your Home into a Wildlife Habitat. That is a good place to start if you want to do something to help protect our planetary biosphere. Protecting and rebuilding habitats, preserving land and maintaining connectivity between ecosystems, planting trees recycling, growing plants at home especially a garden, reducing your own pollution and waste production are all things we can do to help protect the biosphere of this planet. 

4) Climate change

Well, there are numerous things each of use can do about that: cut back on your flying, cut back on your driving, make your home more energy efficient, convert to using solar energy, reduce the goods that you consume and the waste that you produce, eat less meat and dairy. 

Of all the things we do, our driving habits have to be part of the discussion on climate change. By simply being smarter about how you use your vehicle, you can cut your driving down by as much as 20%. If each of us reduced our driving by even 10%, that would reduce CO2 emissions by 110 million metric tons per year, the same as taking 28 coal-fired power plants off line for one year. 

Now we truly live in the middle of no where. And by simply changing what we do and how we work, we have reduced our vehicle use by over 50%. Based on that, if you live in the city I know it is possible for every single person to make some positive changes. 

5) Stratospheric ozone

And believe it or not there are a number of things we can do to protect the ozone. We can minimize the use of our vehicles. We can stop using corrosive cleaning products in our homes and use less toxic compounds. We can avoid the use of products that are known to be harmful to the ozone, such as chlorofluorocarbons. Aerosol products often contain this compound. Dispose of pre-1995 air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers because they need CFCs to function.

6) Atmospheric aerosols

You can also reduce your personal production of atmospheres aerosols. Diesel vehicles are a major source of soot. Sulfate dioxide is a major bye product of power plants, so go solar. 

7) Ocean acidification

The primary cause of ocean acidification is excessive CO2 in the atmosphere. The best way to counter act that is too immediately take steps to reduce climate change and reduce our use of fossil fuels. 

8) Biochemical flows 

Changes in biochemical flows are primarily focused on N and P. Reducing excessive amounts of these two chemicals in the environment means changing our farming practices, run off mitigation, planting cover crops, preventing drainage from livestock facilities by following set back rules. Even constructing wetlands to help detoxify run off water. And for those of us at home, just don’t place fertilizers on your lawn which can then run off into the local water supply. 

9) Novel entities

Novel entities being released into the environment is perhaps one of our biggest challenges. This is because the average citizen has almost no control over the thousands of chemicals being produced on an industrial level. Perhaps our only option is to consume as few products as possible, thereby reducing our impact on the environment. 

That said, there is one thing we can all do. Of all the novel entities entering our environment, the use of plastics by far has one of the most far reaching consequences. As a result, going plastic free can be one of the most impactful things you can do as an individual. 

Summary

Since the first introduction of the nine planetary boundaries, this concept has garnered widespread attention in the scientific community. This is because it outlines a safe operating space for human activity. Many of these experts believe we are hitting a ceiling of the biophysical coping capacity of the entire Earth System. More importantly, many believe that humanity is flying blind when it comes to both the quantity and quality of biodiversity loss that can be tolerated before there is total collapse of our entire ecosystem. What that means is that we reach a tipping point that triggers irreversible change. 

I would have to say that during the time that I’ve been producing this podcast, this is by far one of the most concerning concepts I have discovered. This is because it defines the ecosystem boundaries and the effects of our constant incursion on the delicate balance of our planet and how we are dangerously close to reaching a tipping point. 

And while this may seem like a hopeless situation, as I have stated before, I truly believe that we are not past the point of no return. But, we are past the point of easy. The good news is that there is something that we can do. 

Phasing out fossil fuels as soon as possible and reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions for the entire planet. But even more pressing than that is completely changing our food systems. This is something I truly want to emphasize even though I have discussed this extensively in previous episodes.  

Our food production methods accounts for almost 25% of our greenhouse gas production. It is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss. It is the primary cause of land-use changes, one of the largest sources of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution and by far the greatest strain on our fresh water supply. The world using an astounding 52.8 million gallons of fresh water per second. Additionally, our food production methods generates enormous carbon emissions and consequently contributes to ocean acidification. 

So, our food production system covers six of the nine planetary boundaries

But there is so much that we can do. 

Reduce your food waste because globally we waste 35% of the food that is produced.  And that is a tremendous environmental impact. Buy local to reduce the carbon footprint of the food that you do purchase.  Reduce if not eliminate your consumption of beef and lamb because these two meat sources have the greatest impact. You do not necessarily have to go vegetarian or vegan but you can at least reduce your meat consumption. Furthermore, take the time to do some research and make responsible sea food choices. 

Growing your own food at home is by far the best way to go. It doesn’t get more local than your own backyard. And by all means, give veggies a chance. Plant based food sources have a much less environmental impact and they cost significantly less than meat.  

Now I know that this is an enormous topic which scientifically is very complex. But all you really have to do is simply think of the Earth as a self regulating ecosystem. Human activity is producing such rapid change that the regulating systems of the planet can no longer cope and we are risking the stability of the entire planet. 

But, it is not all bad news. I have given examples of things that we can all do to prevent further detrimental changes. Additionally, go back and listen to E3 How Much Should One Person Be Allowed to Use, E5 Twelve Steps to a Zero Waste Lifestyle, E18 Choice Make Changes, E38 The Value of Simplicity, E66, 67, and 68 on How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, and E135 and 138 on reducing your food waste and having a sustainable kitchen.  There is literally a ton of information in those episodes. 

Just remember that living sustainably is a lifestyle choice. It is a journey not a destination. It is something that I focus on everyday and I am still learning. Humanity’s future has not yet been decided. We can still make a difference. All it takes is a small group of committed citizens to change the world. So be one of them.  

Until next week, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.