The brutal reality is that failure is possible in human societies as well as in ecological systems. There are points beyond which societal problems start to become effectively impossible to solves. And when you combine the two — an on-going societal meltdown with massive ecological degradation — the result can be real, catastrophic failure that lasts for generations, perhaps effectively forever.
Both the planetary boundaries we’re exceeding and the generational thresholds we’re failing to step through ought to be matters of concern for every person on the planet.
Worldchanging reports on metrics developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre which defined a number of tresholds that cannot be crossed over without endangering the biospheric integrity of the planet.
“* Climate Change: Stabilized concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 350 ppm
* Stratospheric ozone layer: A decrease of five percent in column ozone levels at a given latitude with respect to 1964-1980 values
* Ocean acidity: Concentration of carbonate ions in surface sea water of the Southern Ocean should not fall below 80 µmol per kg-1
In addition, they defined seven other boundaries for which specific hard targets were more difficult to pin down but which nonetheless demanded attention: freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle; deforestation; interference with the global nitrogen cycle; terrestrial biodiversity; chemicals dispersion; marine ecosystems.”
Commentary by Alex Steffen, excerpts:
“We’re in the process of straying beyond every single one of these boundaries. Of course, each of these boundaries is a massive issue in its own right, the subject of a global debate involving hosts of experts and advocates; but put them together — as we must, since they are all tied together and affect one another — and we begin to see just how massive the ecological crisis at hand is.
But, as useful as the concept of planetary boundaries is, it also leaves out another critical interplay, the one between human aspirations and abilities and the very real generational thresholds we face.
We are headed towards a peak population of at least nine billion people shortly after mid-century. Almost all of those people will aspire to greater prosperity, quite reasonably in most cases (I think that trying to talk the world’s poor out of their aspirations is a fool’s game). That means we need to expect to see billions more people reaching for what they see as the good life.
At the same time, we can’t repeat the path to wealth that made the developed world rich. We’ve already exceeded the planet’s biocapacity; we’re already beyond the planetary boundaries, meaning that business as usual has prohibitive environmental costs. We’re running out of places to dump and spew waste without dire human cost. We’ve also used up a tremendous share of the planet’s easy bounty — from old trees to cheap oil to big fish to virgin metals — meaning that conventional resource and energy use will largely come from more and more difficult (and often more and more ecologically costly) stocks. Peak everything will not only make getting rich the old fashioned way more expensive, it will also make it more destructive. The combination of what are technically known as declining stocks (less good stuff to use) and shrinking sinks (fewer places to safely put the bad stuff) will make development far more difficult for the world’s poor this century than last.”
We can also act on protecting the planetary Commons by acting to achieve those goals, as Bill McKibben does with his 350.org project.
Excerpts from an interview:
“Sarah Kuck: Where does 350.org fit into the global climate movement?
BM: [The movement] is broader and more diverse than it has been, but it’s still nowhere near big enough. The environmental movement that we had five, 10 years ago was scaled to fight much smaller battles than this one. It was scaled to protect national parks or save particular endangered species — not scaled to take on the most fundamental part of our economy. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking we have a movement large enough to do what needs to be done. We have to do a lot of organizing.
And that’s what 350 is all about. It’s a real attempt to reach people who have never been involved with this before. For example, we’re doing lots of work with churches and lots of work in the developing world. That’s where I’m happiest with our progress so far -– in India and in parts of Africa, Indonesia and Malaysia.
And we’re doing lots of work with young people. The environmental movement, as Americans think about it, had become very grey, and had aged quite significantly. It was still largely composed of people who came of age during the first Earth Day. We have to change that, and we are. It’s really exciting to see youth climate networks, not just in the United States where they are very strong, but also around the world.
SK: What are 350.org’s plans for the future?
BM: The main goal at the moment is to make October 24, 2009, the biggest day of global grassroots action that there’s ever been. Three weeks ago we opened the website for registration and there are now over 1,000 actions signed up and ready to go. There will be several multiples of that by October and it will be very beautiful. We have to figure out how to make that politically powerful, and we will.
Our structure is that we are not an organization. We are a campaign. The reason for that is to make it very porous. It’s open source organizing, which is a relatively new idea (link to Step It Up). Our hope is that everybody grabs a hold of it and brands it with their own logos and does their own thing with it. The globe is too big for any one organization to actually organize. In essence we are throwing a huge potluck supper and saying here’s the date and here’s the theme, now you guys cook. We’ll try to coordinate just enough to make sure not everybody brings dessert. But that’s about the degree to which we can centrally coordinate it. And we will make sure that the results of this big meal are seen around the world. That part we can do.”