“Three of nine boundaries – climate change, biodiversity and nitrogen fixation – have been exceeded.”

Unnaturally heating and cooling the planet (Image: Mauri Rautkari/Rex Features)

A hotter earth is a situation that that will lead to many other issues very soon, like lack of water and food, extinctions, change in air quality, and more.  In a  new article in New Scientist these issues are separated into nine individual challenges that people will have to soon deal with. (Never mind getting some people to even admit they exist). This particular list is about Earth’s nine “support systems” and how they are being threatened by human activity.

Every year or so someone puts together a list like this to bluntly point out to people, very clearly, what is at stake. In 2008 there was a list of the 9 critical tipping points we are approaching with climate change, and I have read others that are similar.   Which list is more important to you is probably based on whether or not you are concerned about the future effects of climate change, or are worried about the planet, or are worried about animals, etc.  I like this list because it emphasizes the bottom line of climate change:  how far can we push the earth’s systems before they will no longer support human life?  Personally, I’m not as worried about the particular animals or fish or trees as I am about people.  The planet will likely be OK no matter what we do to it, with new species evolving to take the place of others that go extinct, but it’s very possible that humans will cause their own extinction. If we ruin this planet, our only home, to the point where it can no longer support us, that’s it for us.  We have no where else to go.

Because there are so many people who deny climate change is  even happening right in front of their eyes and therefore pushing for no action at all, things could get very ugly in a few years.  The saddest thing of all is that it doesn’t have to be that way. If we were taking aggressive steps now to prepare for climate change’s worst effects and strongly curbing emissions, we could transition into a hotter world a little easier, and there would be less loss of life.  But it’s not happening that way.  Here is what to look out for in the coming years. Each segment leads to its own article.

EARTH’S NINE LIVES

From New Scientist

UP TO now, the Earth has been very kind to us. Most of our achievements in the past 10,000 years – farming, culture, cities, industrialisation and the raising of our numbers from a million or so to almost 7 billion – happened during an unusually benign period when Earth’s natural regulatory systems kept everything from the climate to the supply of fresh water inside narrow, comfortable boundaries.

This balmy springtime for humanity is known as the Holocene. But we [...]