by Nicole Clark
When you think about ‘human environmental impact
concerns’, what comes to mind? Perhaps you imagine a flower pushing hippy chained
to a tree. Or, the WWF black and white Panda symbol that flashes before the
beginning of every documentary? Maybe you even envision a sad picture of Earth
with a thermometer dangling out of its mouth? Whatever comes to mind, you know
it is not at all that great. Everybody knows the Planet is not in a good
position these days and everyone has noticed, the emissions reduction schemes
tightening the noose on the general public. However, does anyone really know why? Why is
the planet in such a state?
Putting this whole climate change issue into context
is not something that is achieved over night, and as the ancient Greeks
described: the planet, ‘Gaia’ (Mother Earth)
is something of a complex system. Gaia is suffering from what scientists are
now calling, the dreaded anthropocene (age of man). Current statistics show, 7.4 billion human
beings inhabit our earth (4) and everything we touch has an equal and opposite
reaction.
To put this into further perspective let’s look at a
recent paper that was published in 2009 by,
Nature entitled: ‘A safe operating space for humanity’ (1). Johan
Rockstrom, expresses key ideas for the safe guarding of further environmental
change, where the only solution is to prevent further change. What does it mean
to ‘prevent’ further change? Rockstrom proposes a frame work for the ‘planetary
boundaries’ that must not be crossed in order to maintain current state.
The earth has lots of complex systems and according
to Rockstrom, there are 9 systems- that if the threshold is crossed, will
generate unacceptable environmental change. They are known as: climate change;
rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the
nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean
acidification; global freshwater use; change inland use; chemical pollution;
and atmospheric aerosol loading (1).
These systems can be thought of as a changing interface, a complex
network of interlocking puzzle pieces. So how can we put this puzzle back
together?
Our planet is subject to stresses, stresses of which
are recent to human history. It’s over run by well... us. Humans have achieved what no other species are close to being
capable of, something the experts like to call ‘niche construction’(4) we have designed the perfect world for us, it has everything we need; clean
water, food and shelter as well as other unnecessary comforts like mobile
phones, the internet and televisions. Everything we have done to manipulate our
patch has consequences and these 9
systems- Rockstrom describes, are part of the earth’s environment. They are
complex ‘equilibriums’, which means when they are subject to change,
consequences can be severe.
Rockstrom, recognises three of these systems as
being already over the acceptable threshold. And others are heading the same
way. Put briefly, humans have been burning coal and pumping chemicals into the
atmosphere for a good two centuries (3) so now the atmosphere is changing,
humans are taking Carbon out of the ground (fossil fuels) and releasing it as a
gas into the atmosphere, that gas is
trapping heat in the atmosphere warming up the temperature of Gaia.
These same gases and chemicals are also disrupting
the water cycle and changing the climate, as well as seeping back into the
land, influencing nutrient cycles and seeping into the oceans , making them
acidic and bleaching coral (2). So, that explains all these concepts (nitrogen
and phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion,
chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol loading). Now for the others: humans
are niche constructors (4), so we manipulate our environment to our liking,
during the process to perfect our environment we forgot to consider (all life
other than humans), and this explains our last key concept: biodiversity loss.
Figure 1, Dan Piraro’s representation of this century’s state of the planet (the Anthropocene).
Biodiversity loss means we are losing animal species faster than they can evolve! We are polluting (land and air) faster than Gaia can recover and we are affecting coral reefs and fish populations faster than they can grow. And humans, as a population, are spreading like wild fire taking too much (100 year old tree crops) and giving too little (using non-renewable resources).
Scientists are calling this earth stage: the
anthropocene, because never before has one single species impacted their
environment in such a way (2). And why do we need these boundaries? Because we are affecting all of these 9 systems
to a point that everything is changing for the worse. In fact, Rockstrom
proposes, our impact is so severe, that if we don’t mediate now; Gaia won’t
just be out of balance, she’ll probably reach a state of no return. But what
can we do? Rockstrom describes that setting a boundary for these 9 systems (as
they all influence each other) and three boundaries have already been crossed.
They are (climate change; rate of biodiversity loss and the nitrogen cycle)
that, it is “essential for the life support properties of the environment for
human well being” (1), that no further boundaries are exceeded. Or, the
prospects for humanities future endeavours, will truly hang in the balance.
So now
we come back to the first question: ‘When you think about human environmental
impact concerns, what do you think? Well, by now you’re probably going to
think: Chemical pollution and atmospheric pollution, ocean pollution, complex
systems which need to be mediated and humans are out of control affecting every
environment they touch. But you’ll know, there is a solution, if we mediate
what is already reaching the threshold and what is going that way, we can stop impacting Gaia to a point of no
return. Rockstroms important message preceding this idea? We need to stop what
we are doing... before a systems error is eminent.
References
(1) Rockstrom,J
et al (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461,472-475
(2)
Doney,
S.C. and D.S. Schimel, 2007: Carbon and climate system coupling on
timescales
from the Precambrian to the Anthropocene, Ann. Rev. Environ. Resources,
32,
31-66, doi:10.1146/annurev.energy.32.041706.124700.
(3) Meure, C., Etheridge, D., Trudinger, C.,
Steele, P., Langenfelds, R., vanOmmen, T., Smith, A. & Elkins, J. 2006,
"Law Dome Co2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to 2000 years
BP", Geophysical
Research, vol. 33.
(4) Laland, K., Odling-smee, J. &
.Feldman, M. 2001, "Cultural niche construction and human evolution", Journal of Evolutionary Biology, vol. 14, pp. 22-33.
