This is an interesting article, and we’d seen some of the ‘tipping points’ earlier this year. It clicks nicely with our recent discussion about The BA and the next step of our journey. Certainly it has some good ideas. There are links in the story to other sites of interest. Mike 🙂 Transformation
Planetary Transformation
Participants in the social media selfie campaign entitled This Is My #EarthStatement. © The Earth Statement
Certainly an interesting article Mike, telling everything about what we already know. I am being unfair in using the word “WE” for few are those really well informed. And interesting also to see the constant use of the word “WE” in the article, which assumes that everyone of the 7+ Billion of the planet participated in pushing it towards the edge. I would rather say that a minority of the planet’s inhabitants worked hard to end life on earth for the majority.
Wonderful. It exudes a positive hope. Highly informative and well written. I am passing it on my Facebook page. Taking printout to distribute to a hundred responsible people around.
Professor Rockström’s writing delivers the misguiding impression, that humanity is on track towards making a paradigm shift. This is not the case.
Sustainable Development Goals: It aims to sustain the business. Maintaining our biosphere to keep it healthy and diverse is not the objective of SDG. Instead it focuses on the promise that well being can be secured 7.3 + x billion people.
“Peak child”: Prof. Rockström did not mention that according to World Bank data (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN) the world average fertility rate in 2013 was 2.46. For stable population (without increasing life expectancy(!)) fertility rate should be below 1.4. Currently global population is growing by circa 80 million people per year.
Decarbonisation: 2050 is a little bit too late. “To limit atmospheric CO2 to 450ppm and global mean surface temperature rise to 2C above the pre-industrial period, we must limit the total CO2 budget to 500 Gigatonne.
Given we burn around 35 GT each year globally, that leaves us 15 years to reduce CO2 and other GHG emission to ZERO.”: Meinhausen et al. 2009: Climate models that constrain warming versus not to 2C above the pre-industrial (Nature 2009, 458:1158-1162)
Apart from the above, what is necessary to be changed on the first place is the growth and profit focused global economic system, which fuels hyper-consumption.
And what must be understood on individual level: consumption = CO2 (GHG) emission. The so called developed world must drastically reduce consumption. The problem is that all of those whose interest is to maintain a “healthy economy” will do everything to reach the opposite effect, including IMF, G8, governments, financial market players, etc..
Thanks All, I too took the message of Hope rather than anything else. We need a paradigm shift.
Thanks for your critique Janos, I am also sceptical about ‘peak child’. I agree with you about SDG’s ~ merely a means to business as usual, but with some new ‘shopping niches’ included. Always their meaning of sustainable is profit.
We need a zero-pollution energy generation system globally; the end of gross consumerism (maybe getting rid of oil would help this too); and considering a ‘circular economy’ wherein waste disposal is planned from the outset as part of the economy. Mike 🙂