{"id":7855,"date":"2015-05-05T06:21:29","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T11:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7855"},"modified":"2015-05-05T06:21:29","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T11:21:29","slug":"planetary-boundaries-and-human-prosperity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7855","title":{"rendered":"Planetary Boundaries and Human Prosperity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Planetary Boundaries and Human Prosperity<\/a><\/h3>\n

The future of humanity will depend on mastering a balancing act. The challenge will be to provide for the needs of more than ten billion people while safeguarding our planetary life-support systems. Recent scientific insights have made us better equipped than ever to strike that balance. Doing so will be our generation\u2019s great task.<\/p>\n

Ending poverty has become a realistic goal for the first time in human history. We have the ability to ensure that every person on the planet has the food, water, shelter, education, health care, and energy needed to lead a life of dignity and opportunity. But we will be able to do so only if we simultaneously protect the\u00a0earth\u2019s critical systems<\/a>: its climate, ozone layer,\u00a0soils<\/a>, biodiversity, fresh water, oceans, forests, and air. And those systems are under unprecedented pressure.<\/p>\n

For the last 10,000 years, the earth\u2019s climate has been remarkably stable. Global temperatures rose and fell by no more than one degree Celsius (compared with swings of more than eight degrees Celsius during the last ice age), and resilient ecosystems met humanity\u2019s needs. This period \u2013 known as the Holocene \u2013 provided the stability that enabled human civilization to rise and thrive. It is the only state of the planet of which we know that can sustain prosperous lives for ten billion people.<\/p>\n

But humans have now become the single largest driver of ecosystem change on earth, marking the start of a new geological age that some call the\u00a0Anthropocene<\/a>. Scientists argue over the exact starting point of this epoch, but it can be dated to somewhere around 1945, when modern industry and agriculture began to expand briskly. In the future, geologists will see telltale markers like radioactive carbon \u2013 debris from nuclear blasts \u2013 and plastic waste scattered across the planet\u2019s surface and embedded in rock.<\/p>\n


\nRead more at http:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/environment-boundaries-human-prosperity-by-johan-rockstr-m-and-kate-raworth-2015-04#tOJwRqXxsP1puGFf.99<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planetary Boundaries and Human Prosperity The future of humanity will depend on mastering a balancing act. The challenge will be to provide for the needs of more than ten billion people while safeguarding our planetary life-support systems. Recent scientific insights have made us better equipped than ever to strike that balance. Doing so will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1208,1057,5188,485,4931,3721],"class_list":["post-7855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-anthropocene","tag-ecosystems","tag-human-existence","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-planetary-boundaries","tag-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7856,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions\/7856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}