lørdag 10. mars 2012

Climate change post 13: Planetary boundaries

Scientist and guest writer Schalk Cloete continues with the climate change post series:

Our planet has unmovable physical boundaries – fixed maximum rates at which it can generate the resources we consume and process the wastes we produce. And unfortunately, humanity's massive exponential growth has already broken through a number of these boundaries.

This is very dangerous. Every planetary boundary we cross affects the others and reduces the rate at which our planet can generate resources and process wastes. If we keep this up, the death phase of the bacterial growth curve discussed in the previous post is inevitable. This is an irrefutable scientific fact.

We still have a choice though – a rather obvious one. It's just that I sometimes wonder if we will ever be bothered to make it…