Klaus Hubacek investigates planetary boundaries 13 November 2024
How much land, water, and other resources does our lifestyle require? And how can we adapt this lifestyle to stay within the limits of what the Earth can give? It is possible, Hubacek shows, but it will require policies based on scientific evidence.
With eight billion people, we use a lot of the Earth’s resources in ways that are likely unsustainable. Klaus Hubacek, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, takes stock of the situation.
FSE Newsroom | René Fransen (text) Leoni von Ristok (image editor)
Our consumption patterns affect the environment, that much we know. A clear example is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It has been rising at an increasingly faster rate since the 1960s, resulting in global warming, along with all its dire consequences. There is a limit to the amount of consumption the Earth can support, and in 2009, scientists defined nine ‘planetary boundaries’ as indicators of when we have reached that limit.
Crossing them may lead to irreversible damage to the Earth’s stability and resilience. These planetary boundaries include indicators such as ocean acidification and the global use of fresh water.
In 2023, six of these planetary boundaries had already been crossed.
The divide between rich and poor
Hubacek has devoted his academic career to studying how humanity is performing in terms of these planetary boundaries, and what needs to change to prevent us from crossing them even further. According to him, ‘the basic calculation is: given a certain number of people on the planet and the planetary boundaries, how much can we consume to stay inside these limits?’.
At the moment, the richest one per cent of the world’s population produces 50 times more greenhouse gasses than the four billion people in the bottom 50 per cent.
The divide between the rich and the poor on this planet is a common thread in Hubacek’s work. He is one of the authors of a paper, published in the journal Nature on 13 November, that describes this issue. Using an extensive dataset covering up to 201 consumption groups across 168 countries, the paper analyses the impact of spending patterns on six key environmental indicators.
Continue reading “Can we live on our planet without destroying it?”
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