Here are a few details, with my comments interspersed;
At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.
What is the "unnatural world?" Nothing humanity does is unnatural. We manipulate natural processes and materials using our intellect (the product of evolution) to do something that every species does; either adapt to an change in the environment or adapt the environment to best ensure our survival. You could respond with "Okay, smartguy, are airplanes natural? Do they grow on trees?" My answer would is, "As natural as a bird's nest or an ant’s tunnel." Those don't just happen; they are a manipulation of the environment. If you believe that a nest is "unnatural," then you are being consistent and I can't argue with you, because we define things differently. If you don't believe that, they you are buying into irrational propaganda.
The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption — are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.
Destabilizing it? Or just changing it? The human race has been changing its environment, for good or ill, for millennia. The question is, can our technology, the materialization of our intellect, advance fast enough so that we can cope with negative changes. So far, the answer is yes.
The researchers focused on nine separate planetary boundaries first identified by scientists in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set theoretical limits on changes to the environment, and include ozone depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms.
Some of these are definite problems, such as the flow of fertilizers (and other man-made chemicals) into the oceans.
Species extinction is a bit more debatable. Does it really matter, in the sense of survival of the human race, if Polar Bears go extinct? Of course not. It can be important as a gauge of how much a given local biosystem has changed; but human survival does not depend on the survival of many, if not most of the species on this planet.
There is the bio-diversity argument: that a natural system with more species is more resilient and we could find a species that has gone extinct to be critical to the functioning of a bio-system. However, I think it is clear that most of the species that go extinct are not irreplaceable, in the sense that whatever functions they perform will be filled in by another species. And, before you say, "What's your evidence" I will offer two items. First, we have experienced large scale extinction in the last 200 years and the world's biosystems seem to be functioning. Second, the global bio-system has experienced mass die offs - far more destructive extinction events - and recovered. This would seem to indicate that the global biosphere is very resilient and has very few ket species.
I want to be clear that I am not advocating for the mass destruction of species; just that we need to be careful not to over-estimate the amount of damage the extinction of a species can cause and not hamstring our own advancement because of this fear.
Finally, there are a few items - like the introduction of engineered species - that go directly against our own advancement. Further, through bioengineering, the human race can create lifeforms that a) are more survivable and b) can provide us with end products in a more eco-friendly and efficient fashion. For example, engineering plants with built in defenses against pests reduces the need for chemical pesticides.
The scientists say there is no certainty that catastrophe will follow the transgression of these boundaries. Rather, the scientists cite the precautionary principle: We know that human civilization has risen and flourished in the past 10,000 years — an epoch known as the Holocene — under relatively stable environmental conditions.
This is one thing I kind of agree with. However, in the past we lacked the ability to either correct or adapt to environmental shifts in the manner we do now. Human civilization today is not the same as it was 10000 years ago...or 100 years ago, for that matter. The question is, if there is some major shift in the global environment, can we correct it or adapt to it? The problem is, there is no way to know this.
Technology can potentially provide solutions, but innovations often come with unforeseen consequences. “The trends are toward layering on more and more technology so that we are more and more dependent on our technological systems to live outside these boundaries,” Ray Pierrehumbert, an expert on Earth systems at the University of Chicago, said. “. . . It becomes more and more like living on a spaceship than living on a planet.”
In the sense that we are existing on a world that is increasing a construction of human designed sub-systems (i.e., urbanization, agriculture, purpose designed life, etc) then this is comment is correct. Is this a problem? Or, is this just the human race doing what it evolved to do? I would say it is the latter. Identifying our Western, scientific, technological system of systems (metasystem) as a problem is missing the fact that that very system represents the current pinnacle of human development. It is that metasystem that gives our species the best change of survival and of weather the storms of the future, whether they are created by Man or are something the human race finds itself subjected to.
As a final note, I do want to say I find this kind of work - looking at the Earth as a system of systems and humanities impact on it - to be both fascinating and useful. My point is that we should be careful about anything that hinders our ability to survive as a species; anything that negatively impacts our technological development needs to be looked at critically.
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