The End Of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One Of Many Ecological Crises Threatening To Collapse The Biosphere

EcoInternet - Dr. Glen Barry

At least 10 planetary boundaries exist that threaten to make the biosphere uninhabitable

As industrial human growth continues its relentless assault upon nature, at least nine unfolding global ecological catastrophes in addition to deadly climate change have the potential to destroy the biosphere.
Any number of other environmental planetary boundaries besides climate change such as biodiversity, water, soil, and ecosystem loss and diminishment has the potential to end being.
The already substantial climate change movement must embrace a richer ecology ethic, morphing into a concerted effort to more broadly achieve global ecological sustainability.

“We could solve climate change tomorrow, and soil and water loss – or any number of combinations of surpassed planetary ecological boundaries – would still destroy civilization, potentially killing the living biosphere, and ending being.” – Dr. Glen Barry

Human industrial growth is systematically dismantling the natural ecosystems which constitute our life support system.
Rightly so, there has been an enormous amount of attention given to climate change (though action to rapidly reduce emissions still lags far beyond what is required).
Climate change  is becoming abrupt and runaway; and threatens just by itself to collapse societies, economies, and ultimately the biosphere.
Yet climate change is only one of at least ten global ecological catastrophes which threaten to destroy the global ecological system and portend an end to human beings, and perhaps all life.
Ranging from nitrogen deposition to ocean acidification, and including such basics as soil, water, and air; virtually every ecological system upon which life depends is failing. Gaia is dying.
The threat to global ecological sustainability goes well beyond climate change, and represents a more systematic failing of current political and economic models.
Namely, the commodification of natural ecosystems – that are our and all life’s habitat – and their unsustainable industrial clearance for short-term profit, is sheer ecocidal madness.

The author has hypothesized that more old-growth forests have been lost than the biosphere can bear

A branch of ecological science known as Planetary Boundary science knows much regarding ecological thresholds whereby Earth and her life may collapse and die.
Planetary boundaries have been identified for ten global-scale processes including climate change, rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine), nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, freshwater, land use change, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading (and others clearly exist).
For each scientists have set thresholds beyond which the global ecological system’s integrity as a whole is threatened.
At least three thresholds – climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen deposition in ecosystems – are generally considered to already have been surpassed, meaning the planet is already in a state of ecological overshoot.
Recently I proposed in a peer reviewed scientific paper a tenth Planetary Boundary, adding a threshold for terrestrial ecosystem loss: hypothesizing that 2/3 of Earth’s land base must remain ensconced within natural and semi-natural ecosystems to avoid biosphere collapse (see Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse at http://ecointernet.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/MEQ-Terrestrial-Ecosystem-Loss-and-Biosphere-Collapse.pdf).
Already some 50% of natural ecosystems have been cleared, meaning yet another planetary ecological limit has been exceeded.
My identification of a terrestrial ecosystem boundary was the first published science proposing a planetary boundary based upon terrestrial ecosystem loss and connectivity, and has since been validated in other studies by scientific luminaries.
The point is that while abrupt climate change may well become runaway, collapsing society, the economy, and the biosphere; it is but one of nearly a dozen means whereby humanity has overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth System.
Consider this: nearly half of all topsoil has eroded, 90% of large fish are gone, 4,500 kids die from bad water a day, nearly a billion human-beings live in abject poverty, and daily an unknown numbers of species disappear forever.
Highly inequitable, unjust, and unsustainable industrial human growth is systematically dismantling the ecological systems that make Earth livable.
We could solve climate change tomorrow, and soil and water loss – or any number of combinations of surpassed planetary ecological boundaries – would still destroy civilization, potentially killing the living biosphere, and ending being.

Gaia is dying as planetary ecological boundaries are crossed

Achieving just and equitable global ecological sustainability depends upon the human family becoming more aware of the numerous ecological threats facing our shared survival and well-being. Together we must commit to the radical, science-based social change necessary to sustain Earth and all her life.
This will certainly require a shared “ecology ethic” which universally values nature – the plants, wildlife, and ecological processes that make life possible. Ecology is the meaning of life.

Clearly much more research remains to be done on Planetary Boundaries and threats to the biosphere in sum, as well as communication of dangerous thresholds, and policy development to pull back from the precipice.
I hope to look further at lag times in regard to when exceeding planetary boundary’s thresholds become dangerous, and to use what is known regarding Pacific Islands’ sustainability as a test case for terrestrial ecosystem loss, and to publish further ecological science.
Most importantly, much more effort must be made to act with urgency and resolve upon the science that indicates we face mortal danger.
The way forward on a potentially terminally-ill planet include:

1. transitioning to a steady state economy,
2. slowing population growth and then justly reducing human numbers,
3. committing to equitably meeting all of humanity’s basic human needs,
4. ending all natural ecosystem destruction and assisting remnants to naturally regenerate and spread,
5. ending the use of fossil fuels,
6. embracing organic, non-industrial, perma-culture based agriculture less dependent upon animal husbandry,
7. ending industrial clearance of natural ecosystems such as old-growth forest logging and factory fishing, and
8. demobilizing standing armies and diverting these resources to meeting humanity’s and nature’s needs.

Only such comprehensive, ecological-science based policies can prove sufficient to end climate change and all threats to global ecological sustainability, averting mass human suffering and death as the Earth collapses and dies.
As long as seeds and organisms exist, the propagules to regenerate Earth remain.
It is vital that the diminution of Earth’s biotic diversity across scales – from the gene, to plants and animals, through the communities and ecosystems they come together to form, right up to our one shared biosphere – be halted immediately.
We must not further squander humanity’s biological inheritance upon the altar of frivolous over-consumption by some. And together we must usher in an era of natural ecosystem protection and restoration.
There are many righteous livelihoods – that go far beyond the benefits provided by a slave-like debt economy – to be found in rewilding and pulling humanity back from the ruin of usurping planetary boundaries.
But profiteering upon the systematic ecocide of our one living Earth will have to be banished, and strictly enforced for the common good, by a much reduced government.
There is much joy to be found in nature. Rediscovering wild places and clear waters in communities embraced by nature provides for a far richer life than shopping malls and highways.
As we rediscover a sense of place there are multitudes of pleasures to be found as well in human literature, music, drama, sexuality, and community. Urban centers can be reclaimed from automobiles and once again become re-natured centers of commerce, culture, and civilization.
It is time to come together and choose life over death, truth over ignorance, beauty over industry, flowers rather than electronics.
It is time to return to the land and embrace nature and ecology as the meaning of life. And to address with sufficient policies climate change and all threats to global ecological sustainability at once. Or being ends.

Links

• California Wildfires Are Abrupt Climate Change, Ecological Collapse
• Declaring Climate Peace in an Age of Ecological Restoration
• Collapse of Antarctic glaciers seems to be unstoppable
• With Sudden Greenland Ice Melt, Reiterating Declaration of Planetary Ecological Emergency

Australian Health Groups Urge Coal Phase-Out And Strong Emissions Reduction

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

World-first climate and health framework from 30 health and medical groups calls for recognition of citizens’ ‘right to health’

‘We are conducting a planetary-scale experiment with uncontrolled dumping of CO2 at a rate that is truly frightening. We have to stop,’ Nobel laureate Peter Doherty says. Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

To save hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, Australia should rapidly phase out coal power stations and establish strong emissions reduction targets, according to a coalition of 30 major health and medical groups.
A world-first National Climate and Health Strategy framework launched after 12 months of consultation and development by the Public Health Association of Australia, the Royal Australian College of General Practice and the Australian College of Nursing, today launched their framework, which they say is needed to avert a health emergency which threatens to undermine 50 years of gains in development and health.
Many of the policy recommendations made by the coalition are “win-win”, which both reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as reducing the social and economic costs of sickness.
Fiona Armstrong, the executive director of the Climate and Health Alliance, said the framework provides a comprehensive roadmap for achieving Australia’s obligation under the Paris Agreement to recognise its citizens’ “right to health”.
Peter Doherty, Nobel laureate for medicine and campaign ambassador for Our Climate Health said: “We are currently conducting a planetary-scale experiment with uncontrolled dumping of CO2 at a rate that is truly frightening. No university ethics committee would ever sanction such a study for mice, let alone humans. We have to stop.”
He told Guardian Australia he thought awareness of the health impacts of climate change needed to be embedded into all other policy areas – from building design to transport infrastructure and health funding.
There were already many health-related costs of climate change being seen in Australia, the framework document points out. For example, heatwaves in 2009 and 2014 contributed to hundreds of deaths in Victoria and projections suggest the figure will rise to several thousand additional deaths from heatwaves by 2050.
It also points out the use of coal is contributing to 4,000 deaths each year, mostly by exacerbating existing chronic cardiac and respiratory illnesses.
There is also already an economic burden, with extreme heat costing the Australian economy $8bn each year through reduced productivity, and the health effects of bushfires often costing billions.
The policy framework has seven key areas, and more than 50 recommendations, which require a coordinated national approach, involving the commonwealth government.
Among those recommendations are 26 relating to emissions-reduction policies that would also improve the health of the community. Among those, the coalition calls for a “rapid” transition away from coal power and fossil fuels “with appropriate support for affected workers and communities to ensure a just transition.” It also calls for the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels and for investment in zero-emissions transport infrastructure such as trains and bicycle paths.
Other policy areas the framework deals with include emergency and disaster-preparedness, building a climate-resilient healthcare sector and research and data.
Efforts in other countries to address climate and health surpassed that made in Australia, the framework document notes.
In the US, the Centre for Disease Control outlines 11 different policy actions for climate change and promotes research into climate change and health, as well s preparedness.
The EU has guidance for member states on protecting their communities from the impacts of climate change and the UK has mitigation and adaptation policies for the health sector.
Nick Watts, executive director at Lancet Countdown, a major international project that aims to measure and track countries’ progress on climate and health, said if adopted, the framework would make Australia a leader in the area. “The implementation of a national strategy on climate change and health could put Australia in a leadership position globally and go a long way to ensuring the protection of community health and well-being while reducing carbon emissions.”

Links

• Australia warned it has radically underestimated climate change security threat
• Ten years ago Turnbull called out Peter Garrett on climate. What went wrong?
• Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate
• Renewable energy spike led to sharp drop in emissions in Australia, study shows
• 'Clean coal', CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up
• German coalition agrees to cut carbon emissions up to 95% by 2050
• World Bank says Paris climate goals at risk from new coal schemes
• Business and academic leaders urge new conversation about coal-free future
• US clean power plan setback 'will not affect Paris climate change deal'
• India says Paris climate deal won't affect plans to double coal output

Australia, Deep In Climate Change's 'Disaster Alley', Shirks Its Moral Responsibility

Fairfax - Ian Dunlop*

A government's first responsibility is to safeguard the people and their future well-being. The ability to do this is threatened by human-induced climate change, the accelerating effects of which are driving political instability and conflict globally. Climate change poses an existential risk to humanity that, unless addressed as an emergency, will have catastrophic consequences.
In military terms, Australia and the adjacent Asia-Pacific region is considered to be "disaster alley", where the most extreme effects are being experienced. Australia's leaders either misunderstand or wilfully ignore these risks, which is a profound failure of imagination, far worse than that which triggered the global financial crisis in 2008. Existential risk cannot be managed with conventional, reactive, learn-from-failure techniques. We only play this game once, so we must get it right first time.
Illustration: Trump flips the bird to the world
Though Australia's climate policies are woeful, we're still in the Paris Climate Accord, unlike the USA. Artist: Matt Davidson.

This should mean an honest, objective look at the real risks to which we are exposed, guarding especially against more extreme possibilities that would have consequences damaging beyond quantification, and which human civilisation as we know it would be lucky to survive.
Instead, the climate and energy policies that successive Australian governments adopted over the last 20 years, driven largely by ideology and corporate fossil-fuel interests, deliberately refused to acknowledge this existential threat, as the shouting match over the wholly inadequate reforms the Finkel review proposes demonstrates too well. There is overwhelming evidence that we have badly underestimated both the speed and extent of climate change's effects. In such circumstances, to ignore this threat is a fundamental breach of the responsibility that the community entrusts to political, bureaucratic and corporate leaders.
A hotter planet has already taken us perilously close to, and in some cases over, tipping points that will profoundly change major climate systems: at the polar ice caps, in the oceans, and the large permafrost carbon stores. Global warming's physical effects include a hotter and more extreme climate, more frequent and severe droughts, desertification, increasing insecurity of food and water supplies, stronger storms and cyclones, and coastal inundation.
Climate change was a significant factor in triggering the war in Syria, the Mediterranean migrant crisis and the "Arab spring", albeit this aspect is rarely discussed. Our global carbon emission trajectory, if left unchecked, will drive increasingly severe humanitarian crises, forced migrations, political instability and conflicts.
Australia is not immune. We already have extended heatwaves with temperates above 40 degrees, catastrophic bushfires, and intense storms and floods. The regional effects do not receive much attention but are striking hard at vulnerable communities in Asia and the Pacific, forcing them into a spiral of dislocation and migration. The effects on China and South Asia will have profound consequences for employment and financial stability in Australia.
In the absence of emergency action to reduce Australian and global emissions far faster than currently proposed, the level of disruption and conflict will escalate to the point that outright regional chaos is likely. Militarised solutions will be ineffective. Australia is failing in its duty to its people, and as a world citizen, by playing down these implications and shirking its responsibility to act.

Bushfires that destroy property and lives are increasingly regular across Australia. Photo: Jason South

Nonetheless, people understand climate risks, even as their political leaders underplay or ignore them. About 84 per cent of 8000 people in eight countries surveyed recently for the Global Challenges Foundation consider climate change a "global catastrophic risk". The result for Australia was 75 per cent. Many people see climate change as a bigger threat than epidemics, weapons of mass destruction and the rise of artificial intelligence.
What is to be done if our leaders are incapable of rising to the task?

The new normal? Residents paddle down a street in Murwillumbah in March after heavy rains led to flash flooding. Photo: Jason O'Brien

First, establish a high-level climate and conflict taskforce in Australia to urgently assess the existential risks, and develop risk-management techniques and policies appropriate to that challenge.
Second, recognise that climate change is an global emergency that threatens civilisation, and push for a global, coordinated, practical, emergency response.

"We only play this game once, so we must get it right first time."

Third, launch an emergency initiative to decarbonise Australia's economy no later than 2030 and build the capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Fourth, help to build more resilient communities domestically and in the most vulnerable nations regionally; build a flexible capacity to support communities in likely hot spots of instability and conflict; and rethink refugee policies accordingly.

Young children walk through debris in Vanuata after Cyclone Pam hit in 2015. Photo: Unicef

Fifth, ensure that Australia's military and government agencies are fully aware of and prepared for this changed environment; and improve their ability to provide aid and disaster relief.
Sixth, establish a national leadership group, outside conventional politics and drawn from across society, to implement the climate emergency program.
A pious hope in today's circumstances? Our leaders clearly do not want the responsibility to secure our future. So "everything becomes possible, particularly when it is unavoidable".

*Ian Dunlop was an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association and chief executive of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. This is an extract from his report with David Spratt, Disaster alley: climate change, conflict and risk, released on Thursday.

Links

• Hotter Planet, Humanitarian Crisis
• Global Energy Use Indicates We're Heading Toward Climate Emergency Faster Than We Thought
• Global Warming Could Yield Catastrophic Effects Sooner Than We Think
• The Global Impacts of Rapidly Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice
• Climate Change Effects on Weather Are "Possibly Catastrophic," Scientist Says
• This is not rhetoric: the Adani mine will kill millions