Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #11 "No such thing as planetary boundaries" with Johan Rockström

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Bad Idea #11 "No such thing as planetary boundaries" with Johan Rockström · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

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  I would say that two things are novel and important with the
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  planet boundary framework. What 1 is, what we need to care
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  about for the planet's health is not only climate.
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  We tend to at best get stuck only with climate.
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  The planet boundary framework shows that it's, it's more than
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  climate, but it's, on the other hand, it also shows that it's
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  not 50 things or 100 things. It's it's 9 systems.
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  I have great respects to to the limits of growth, but there's a
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  fundamental difference between the limits of growth and the
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  planetary boundaries. We make no assumptions of how
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  much food is required or energy is required, or what
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  technologies we have, or you have nuclear power plants, or if
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  you have wind offshore. We don't care about that.
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  We only set the boundaries on keeping the planet as close as
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  possible to the Holocene range of variability.
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  Once that is done, we get a safe operating space.
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  Think of it as a, as a football pitch.
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  The boundaries are like those lines when you play a game of
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  football or you know, whatever game you play, what game do we
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  play within the space? And, and my conclusion is, and
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  the conclusion of the science is that nothing hinders us to be
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  prosperous, equitable and successful within the
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  boundaries, safe operating space.
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  And we have so much evidence that when you have constraints
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  like that, you actually are more innovative, you're more likely
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  to be efficient, you're more likely to actually be more
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  competitive and and actually advance yourself towards a more
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  modern future. But putting these constraints
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  does not hinder economic development at all.
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  On the contrary, I think it actually, you know, stimulates
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  faster efficient resource use and the limits to growth.
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  It was criticized on good grounds that the limits to
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  growth underestimated our ability to innovate and and that
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  is something that the Planet Boundary framework completely
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  deliberates itself from it it it makes no assumptions on on this
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  factor. Welcome to saving the world from
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  bad ideas. I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a
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  few bad ideas in my time. I used to go out in the night
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  time to destroy GMO crops, and I also posed nuclear power.
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  But then when I looked at the science, I found I got it wrong.
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  Oops. I've learned the hard way that
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  none of us are right all the time.
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  So now I'm here to challenge the assumptions that we all too
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  often take for granted because the future depends on us getting
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  it right. This episode I'm delighted that
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  we've got Johann Rockstron with us, who's an old friend of mine,
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  someone whose work I've even written a book about.
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  So I've got huge admiration for everything that that you've done
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  in Johan and I'll just do the formal introduction.
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  So Johan Rocham, the director of the Potsdam Institute for
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  Climate Impacts Research and a professor of Earth System
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  science at the University of Potsdam.
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  Johan's also an internationally recognised scientist on global
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  sustainability and Earth's resilience, and LED the
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  development of the Planetary Boundaries framework, which
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  we'll talk about a lot in the next hour.
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  And he's also deeply involved in research on the future
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  trajectory of the Anthropocene and on tipping points in the
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  Earth system as well. Actually, I think Johan, you're
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  a hydrologist, aren't you? By training water water
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  resources in developing. Countries that's right.
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  Well, great, great to great to be with you, Mark and yes,
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  that's right. Originally I did so science and
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  hydrology as my master's and then a PhD in systems ecology,
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  and then moved increasingly into climate science and global
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  hydrology. So it's been a bit of an
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  interdisciplinary trajectory. And I think, I think we met him.
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  Was it Talberg or some place in Sweden has a has a big Was it
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  Talberg? It was Talberg, a beautiful
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  little village just by a lake. A very legendary lake called the
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  stood under the large lake up in Dolana in Sweden and and a
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  meeting that was organized as let's say it was an attempt to
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  do an equivalent of the World Economic forums Davos meeting,
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  but focusing entirely on on on the planet and how how on earth
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  can we can we govern Earth together?
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  Basically was was the theme and that was where we brought
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  scientist for the first time to explore what to do with all the
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  evidence of the Anthropocene of tipping points and and
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  understanding the stability of the Holocene.
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  And that's where where the idea around the planet's boundary
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  framework was was born. Yeah, I remember that.
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  And I mean, I guess it was like Davos, but without the oligarchs
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  and the assholes. Definitely, definitely.
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  I think I remember Jim Hanson was there as well.
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  Was there at one of the one of the events?
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  I think there was more than one. And yeah.
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  Oh, and prepare for a humble brag.
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  The king of Sweden came to my workshop in a tent at Talberg.
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  I remember. Which is.
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  But apparently I tells people and anyone in Sweden go, well,
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  he goes to every workshop, so there's nothing.
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  No. No, no, no.
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  You should be proud about that. And I can tell you that my, my
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  kids who are now adult, I mean, they're 23 to 25 years old, they
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  still talk about playing football with Mark Lioness and
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  Telberg when they were like, you know, what, could they have been
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  seven years old? Yeah, well, that's because I was
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  goalkeeper and I think I let in about 30 goals.
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  So I think you're both delighted, but no.
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  Tell us about. So the planetary boundaries
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  concept is obviously what you spent many years on with that
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  whole scientific team and that sort of formed in this meeting.
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  Obviously you came to the meeting with the idea already,
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  right? So that's what the process is
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  for, coming up with this, you know, really powerful, almost
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  revolutionary new paradigm for how we see the Earth system and
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  and the kind of current environmental predicament.
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  Well, I mean definitely we we had actually almost one year of
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  preparatory scientific work. It was myself together,
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  particularly with the late Professor Will Steffen or a
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  system scientist from Australia National University, together
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  with professor called Folk and a few others at the Stockholm
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  Resilience Center, who sat down with with all the Earth system
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  science evidence that we have been, you know, made remarkable
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  advancements over the past 30 years through the global
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  environmental change research programs, particularly the
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  International Geosphere Biosphere Program, which no
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  longer exists. But the IGPP was an engine
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  behind all the evidence of the Anthropocene and the great
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  acceleration curves, you know, the, the famous hockey stick
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  curves showing that we're today a geological force of change on
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  planet Earth. That was a game changer, a piece
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  of evidence that provided the evidence that, you know, if
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  we're putting pressure at the planetary scale, then we need to
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  also account and measure and, and set boundaries or limits at
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  the planetary scale. The second piece of evidence
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  was, was clearly the the the paleoclimatic science that was
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  coming out at the time from programs like pages and, and,
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  and just you know, all the Milacovic cycling and the Vostok
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  ice sheet ice ice core data showing, you know, the planetary
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  dance between 100,000 years of ice ages and and shorter 15 to
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  30,000 year interglacials over the past 1,000,000 year, the
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  Pleistocene period of the Quaternary.
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  And then how we exit the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago and
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  enter this remarkably stable Holocene into glacial.
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  The last 10,000 years of 14°C of global mean surface temperature
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  with a variability which at the time was thought to be around
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  plus -1°C, but today is understood to have been even
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  more narrow plus -0.5°C. So what we called already then
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  when we met in Telberg, you'd need the the Garden of Eden and
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  the reference point on the planet we depend on has been
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  proven to be even more stable. So that was the second piece of
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  evidence and the third was coming out of resilience theory
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  of complex systems research. And and the recognition that the
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  Earth system is not only set up by a number of spheres, the
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  atmosphere, the stratosphere, the cryosphere, the geosphere,
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  the litosphere and the biosphere, but also that these
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  spheres interact and that they have feedbacks.
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  And these interactions and feedbacks means that biophysical
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  systems on Earth have tipping point behavior, meaning that you
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  have both processes, but also physical systems like the green
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  and ice sheet and the Amazon rainforest, which through their
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  fundamental functioning that has been established during the
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  Holocene, they're dominated by negative feedbacks, which means
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  dampening feedbacks, which keeps them in in one basin of
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  attraction. But if you erode them too much
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  and push them too far, they can cross thresholds, meaning that
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  feedbacks change direction. Dampening negative feedbacks
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  shift 180° to become positive feedbacks, self amplifying
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  feedbacks and the systems topple over and irreversibly moves into
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  a different state which can lead to a drift of the whole earth
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  system in the wrong direction. The 1st paper on tipping Point
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  science and the tipping Point evidence came out in 2008.
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  So so literally in the midst of this work towards the meeting in
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  in Telberg which was actually held in 2008.
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  So when these pieces were brought together, and I think
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  that was what what myself and Will Steffen really accomplished
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  was, was not to do so much absolute new primary data
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  collection, but but the fact that we integrated the
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  Anthropocene evidence, the Holocene evidence and the
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  tipping point evidence and the resilience theory, putting all
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  that together. And out of that came the the
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  theory of the planetary boundary framework, which is based on 2
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  questions, very basic fundamental questions that if we
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  now are a geological force of change and if we have the
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  Holocene as a reference point for desired planet, and if
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  tipping points are real, meaning that we have to avoid pushing
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  the system too far across thresholds.
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  Then question number one obviously is what are the
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  environmental processes and systems that regulates the
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  stability, the resilience and the functioning of the Earth
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  system? And question 2, is it possible
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  for each of these, once these boundary processes are
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  identified, can we for control variables that regulate these
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  processes, quantify a safe boundary, A boundary beyond
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  which the science show that we're likely to generate
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  irreversible changes in the functioning of the Earth system,
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  but stay within them. And we have a high likelihood of
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  remaining within a Holocene like interglacial basin of
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  attraction, which we concluded very early in the work that that
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  is the planet we depend on. That's, that's the, that's the
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  only state of the planet that has scientific evidence that it
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  can support the modern world as we know it.
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  And we can come back a bit deeper to, to why we can say
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  that, but that that was basically the, if you call it
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  the breakthrough point. And in the, in the science was
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  to integrate these, these different strands of science
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  and, and take it to the next level and develop a theory
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  around it, which became what we call today quite, quite strictly
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  actually a planetary boundary framework.
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  It's, it's not a concept, it's actually a whole framework.
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  It's a, it has a methodology, it's reproducible.
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  It is, it is transparent, it's based on analytics and data and
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  it brings in multiple disciplines, but it's a, it has
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  a kind of a coherent methodology.
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  And before we get too much into the sort of academic discussion
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  of the planetary boundaries, maybe can you just tell us what
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  they are and if you can remember some of the numbers?
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  I mean, I've tried doing lots of talks on this, and I can never
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  remember all nine, at least the nine that were originally
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  proposed, even though I wrote a book about it.
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  So you probably have a better memory than me.
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  But just just for the uninitiated, this is a very
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  smart audience. But we've got all ages.
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  People haven't necessarily heard about this already.
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  So just give us the quick planetary boundaries, you know,
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  overview. Yeah, no.
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  And, and again, so we're, we're not, we're not listing important
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  environmental issues here. We are actually doing nothing
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  more, nothing less than than setting out to find the, the
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  environmental processes and systems that regulates the
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  state, the functioning and the life support on Earth.
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  And we have identified 9 planetary boundary processes.
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  And of course, no surprise to anyone, number one of those is,
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  is a stable climate system. So here you have climate change
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  being one of the boundaries. We have two more boundaries,
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  which I often describe as being in the family of planetary scale
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  boundaries. These are boundaries that have
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  scientific evidence of tipping point behavior at the planetary
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  scale, the climate system, the stratospheric ozone layer, which
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  protects the Earth's system and the life support on Earth from
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  dangerous UV radiation. And finally, ocean stability,
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  which we have used ocean acidification as the as, as the
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  process to, to indicate the stability of the ocean.
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  So those are three boundaries that that operate at the
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  planetary scale. They're they're, they're kind of
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  regulating the function at the planetary scale.
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  Then you have 4, what I call biosphere boundaries, which are
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  the boundaries that do not have scientific evidence of planetary
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  scale tipping points. But they operate under the hood
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  of, of the, of the planetary machinery to, to slowly but
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  surely regulate the, the buffering capacity of the
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  planet. And they interact then with,
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  with the big three. And to no surprise, I think to
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  anyone, number one of them is, is life on Earth bias integrity.
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  It is the genet, the genetic diversity and the functional
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  diversity, basically the the ability of of forests or
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  wetlands or grasslands or marine systems to remain stable thanks
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  to the diversity of species and diversity of genetics in those
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  systems. The second is land system
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  configuration, which is we've learned in the Holocene that you
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  know, when, when temperatures settle down and hydrology settle
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  down, we got a certain configuration of peatlands,
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  wetlands, rainforests, temperate forest, Boro forest.
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  So the composition of these land use systems is, is set as a
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  boundary. Then of course, the bloodstream
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  of the Earth system itself, the hydrological cycle, the global
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  freshwater cycle, which is behind all life, all carbon
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  sequestration, all photosynthesis, all biomass on
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  Earth. And then finally the the sister
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  cycles to carbon, namely the biochemical cycles of nitrogen
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  and phosphorus. So the neutron cycles.
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  So there you have the, the, the four biosphere boundaries, call
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  them, think of them as the nature boundaries, biodiversity,
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  land, freshwater and nutrients. And then we have finally three
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  more human related boundaries and they're human related
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  because they tend to be, let's say unnatural to the Earth's
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  system. And #1 is aerosol loading, which
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  is air pollutants, which is the dimming of the lower atmosphere
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  because of sulfates, nitrates, black carbon, all the all the
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  smog in cities, which aggregates up to a level where they
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  actually impact on the energy balance between the Northern and
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  Southern hemisphere, but even impacting on monsoon rainfall
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  systems. And then we have novel entities,
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  which is the loading of human created chemicals, everything
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  from PFAS to microplastics, nuclear waste and persistent
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  organic pollutants. And finally, which I mentioned
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  earlier, the stratospheric ozone layer, which is a chemicals
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  related boundary. So there you have the 9 again.
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  I grouped them in kind of three groups, the big three climate,
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  ozone and ocean, the four biosphere boundaries of
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  biosphere integrity, land use change, freshwater and nutrients
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  and and the two kind of chemicals and pollution related
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  air pollutants, aerosol loading and novel entities.
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  The, the the, the most difficult 1 to quantify, by the way, the
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  over 100,000 of, of, of new chemicals that are out in the
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  market and where we have limited safety standards on.
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  So those are the 9 and umm, under these 9:00 we, we do umm,
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  identify control variables and one boundary can have several
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  control variables. So for example, for climate, we,
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  we use carbon dioxide concentration and climate
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  forcing. And so, not surprisingly, we use
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  multiple data sets to to monitor these nine.
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  And and climate forcing is what watts per square meter of?
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  That's basically the heat injection in the system from all
• 17:46
  greenhouse gases. So that is what's what's per
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  square meters, yes. Right.
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  And, and what was so strong, so strong and so revolutionary
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  about these boundaries, as I think you're about to say before
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  interrupted you, what's that they, they have quantified
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  values as sort of a safe space and a dangerous space to talk to
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  us a bit about how those work. Yeah, I mean, I would say that
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  that is, I mean, 2, two things are novel and important with a
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  planet boundary framework. What 1 is, you know, what we
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  need to care about for the planet's health is not only
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  climate. We tend to at best, get stuck
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  only with climate. The planet boundary framework
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  shows that it's, it's more than climate, but it's, on the other
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  hand, it also shows that it's not 50 things or 100 things.
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  It's, it's 9 systems. And, and these are now after 50
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  years of scientific advancement, you know, there's been over 1500
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  peer reviewed scientific papers, even with planetary boundaries
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  in the title. A lot of scrutiny, a lot of
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  critique, a lot of debates back and forth.
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  And I, I can say with, you know, with very little hesitation
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  today that, you know, we, we still have a lot of, of research
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  that we need to do on the boundaries to get better
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  precision on, on the safe boundary levels.
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  I'll come to those quantifications, more control
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  variables, new data. But, but today I can say with
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  high degree of confidence that if, if we become clever stewards
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  of these nine, then we have a good chance of keeping the
• 19:20
  planet in a state that can support current and future
• 19:23
  generations of humans on Earth. So that that's that's what those
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  9 represent. But for each of those nine, we
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  identify control variables and these control variables we
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  quantify a safe boundary level across the scientific assessment
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  of evidence. So just to give you an example
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  here, so for climate, we use a concentration of carbon dioxide
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  as one of the control variables. Why?
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  Because carbon dioxide is the dominant greenhouse gas, it is
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  long lived in the atmosphere, it is well measured, we have data
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  for it for long time series and we scan through the science and
• 20:09
  have come to the conclusion that the uncertainty range for moving
• 20:15
  from a safe state to the risk of causing irreversible changes
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  lies somewhere between 350. And 450 PPM of carbon dioxide
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  concentration, OK. So that is what we call the
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  uncertainty range in science. And one part of the planet
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  boundary theory is that we have, you know, the whole framework.
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  I I'm very clear that it's an objective framework, but there's
• 20:45
  one normative decision that we've taken, which is we place
• 20:48
  the safe boundary at the lower end of the scientific
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  uncertainty that that admittedly is applying A precautionary
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  principle. You know, you could place the
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  boundary in, in the middle as a median of the uncertainty range
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  or even closer to the higher end of the uncertainty range.
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  But we've chosen to place the boundary at the lower end of the
• 21:10
  uncertainty range. So that's where you go from the
• 21:13
  green safe level into what we call the danger zone and the and
• 21:18
  the danger zone, which we often in our presentation of the data
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  show in in in a yellow color, which is also inspired by the
• 21:28
  IPCC, then the governmental panel climate change, which uses
• 21:30
  a burning embers color scheme. When you go deeper into higher
• 21:35
  risk, you move deeper and deeper towards red and then purple
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  colors to, to show the, the gradual increase of likelihood
• 21:42
  of causing permanent damage. And we use the same.
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  So when you go from green into yellow, you enter this, this
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  uncertainty range. And then when you reach the
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  upper end of the uncertainty, the 450 PPM part, that is where
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  you go from yellow orange into red and, and we call that the
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  the high risk zone. So importantly, yes, the plan
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  boundary framework, a unique feature is we quantify for all
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  these 9 boundaries, giving us a safe operating space that we can
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  account against. But admittedly, and this is
• 22:17
  something we have to learn, it's a risk assessment.
• 22:20
  It's not, it's not giving us the exact number when the planet
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  kind of goes from a stable state to an unstable state, we're
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  saying that you, you breach A boundary and you enter a danger
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  zone. That's the zone where science
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  shows things is likely to happen, but we don't know
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  exactly where. But if you exit that uncertainty
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  zone into the red zone, then you are very likely to cause
• 22:45
  permanent damage. So it's a, it's a kind of a
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  gradual scale, but the boundaries placed in a
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  precautionary basis and the lower end of that uncertainty.
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  And we have been, you know, and that's just just important to,
• 23:00
  to also recognize that this is ongoing research.
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  It isn't until 2023, so basically almost 15 years into
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  the Pentagonic science that we were for the first time able to
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  quantify all the nine boundaries.
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  Up until then, we've had major struggles to quantify the
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  aerosol boundary, the novel entities boundary and, and
• 23:21
  continuous work on the biodiversity boundary, which is,
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  which is really complex to get full quantifications of.
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  And, and while the 9 boundaries have stayed intact, we've had
• 23:31
  shifts in control variables over the years.
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  So, so the science does advance, but but now and when we meet
• 23:38
  here today, we actually have a fully quantified safe operating
• 23:44
  space for the Earth system based on the planet boundary
• 23:47
  framework. And that is, that is, you know,
• 23:50
  it's very satisfactory as a, as a starting point.
• 23:52
  But of course, I foresee they will see improvements in these
• 23:56
  quantifications as as data is added, new analytics, new
• 24:01
  science is is is is performed. Thank.
• 24:07
  Thanks. I think that that's a really
• 24:09
  clear and, and useful sort of explanation.
• 24:12
  But I often wonder, is this a human sort of a human relevant
• 24:17
  concept only that applies in the, in the Holocene so well and
• 24:21
  maybe the Anthropocene now, So the the last 10,000 years since
• 24:24
  the end of the Ice Age. Or is it resilient throughout
• 24:28
  geological time in a way like because you could have a lower
• 24:30
  end to the CO2 boundary, Like if you get below 270 parts per
• 24:34
  million, you get an Ice Age, right?
• 24:35
  So it's not always about going up and you know, and that does
• 24:38
  do the boundaries apply in the hot periods and the Cretaceous
• 24:41
  or something like that, you know, or previous mass
• 24:43
  extinctions, Have the boundaries been transgressed to cause those
• 24:45
  mass extinctions or something? Have you tried looking at it
• 24:48
  through paleoclimatic time, or is it really just something
• 24:50
  which is relevant to the modern era?
• 24:53
  So yeah, that's a really good, good question.
• 24:56
  And I would say that the, our, let's say our understanding
• 25:03
  today, let's put it that way, because we haven't, you know, we
• 25:05
  don't have the full evidence here, but I understand today
• 25:08
  that it is a, a framework that works throughout essentially
• 25:13
  throughout the whole Quaternary. So the past 3,000,000 years.
• 25:18
  But you cannot go beyond the Quaternary.
• 25:21
  But I would argue nobody can go beyond the Quaternary in terms
• 25:24
  of claiming climate forcing levels or, or the functioning of
• 25:31
  your system, because beyond the Quaternary, we are essentially
• 25:35
  outside of, of anything that resembles chemically, physically
• 25:41
  or biologically or geologically the planet of today.
• 25:45
  It's only when you enter the Quaternary that you start having
• 25:49
  the continental composition, the chemistry in the ocean, the
• 25:53
  atmosphere, the freshwater cycle that that even comes close to
• 25:58
  the planet of today. And it's moreover, it's not
• 26:00
  until you enter the Pleistocene and and the latter part of the
• 26:04
  Quaternary and only in the last 1,000,000 years that you start
• 26:08
  seeing a planet that moves around the sun according to the
• 26:13
  Milankovic cycles that we have these 100,000 year ice ages,
• 26:19
  that is 5°C colder mean temperatures on Earth.
• 26:23
  And then we have these shorter interglacials where temperatures
• 26:27
  rise with between 5 to 7°C and we stay in these interglacial
• 26:33
  periods for 5030 thousand years and then enter ice ages again.
• 26:37
  And this, this dance between Ice Age and the glacial is all
• 26:40
  related to, to the elliptic cycling of the planet around the
• 26:46
  sun, solar cycles, and of course the wobbling of the Earth's
• 26:50
  axis. And I, I argue quite strongly
• 26:52
  that, you know, it's only this period, this last million years
• 26:57
  that is, is of any relevance for, for guiding our human
• 27:03
  understanding of the planet that we depend on as a species on
• 27:08
  planet Earth. So you're right, it's, it's in
• 27:10
  that sense a very anthropogenic, anthropogenic framework.
• 27:14
  How can I say that? Well, I can say that for the
• 27:16
  simple reason that how long have we existed as modern Homo
• 27:20
  sapiens on planet Earth? Well, actually just over the
• 27:23
  past 250,000 years. So, so we have only existed
• 27:27
  through 2 ice ages and this is our second interglacial.
• 27:32
  And so we've had, we basically lived through over 90% of the
• 27:38
  time that we've existed on planet Earth.
• 27:40
  We've lived in Ice Age. I mean that that's kind of our,
• 27:43
  our default is, is deep Ice Age. And when you look at that, we
• 27:47
  were hunters and gatherers. We lived in caves.
• 27:50
  We had massive environmental fluctuations, a really rough
• 27:53
  time to be a human being on planet Earth.
• 27:57
  And and then we, we leave this last Ice Age and, and the
• 28:00
  genetic codes of all life on Earth, not all, but, but the
• 28:06
  predominant part of life on Earth has, has existed even
• 28:09
  beyond the 1,000,000 years. But it's only in the Holocene
• 28:12
  that it settles down. I mean, that's what is quite
• 28:14
  interesting that you know, the ice sheets, the sea levels, the
• 28:19
  marine coral reef systems, the forest systems, the biomes, A
• 28:23
  boreal temperate rainforest, they all settle down in the
• 28:28
  Holocene. It's in the Holocene.
• 28:30
  It all kind of comes together. So, so that is why I think there
• 28:37
  is a strong argument to say that the planet boundary framework is
• 28:41
  this generic. You, you can apply it throughout
• 28:44
  the whole Quaternary. I think you can apply definitely
• 28:47
  through the Pleistocene, but but admittedly it is, it is shaped
• 28:51
  for as a reference point for a planet that can serve humanity.
• 28:58
  It's, it's, it's, it's not, it's not.
• 29:01
  I mean, Simply put, the planet doesn't care in, in whether it's
• 29:05
  breaching or not breaching the boundaries.
• 29:08
  We care about staying within the safe space because staying
• 29:12
  within the safe space gives us a high chance of having a Holocene
• 29:16
  like planet, and that's the planet we all depend on.
• 29:20
  So so let me put you to the put you on the spot with another
• 29:24
  test. And this is not just an excuse
• 29:27
  to plug my new book on nuclear war.
• 29:29
  But let's say there's a nuclear war.
• 29:31
  And how does, how does, how do the boundaries represent that?
• 29:37
  You've got an atmos, you've got a stratosphere which is full of
• 29:39
  salt. The temperature plunges by 10°
• 29:41
  and a nuclear winter. There's radioactivity
• 29:43
  everywhere. There's a nuclear famine and
• 29:45
  most of the human population dies of a mass extinction,
• 29:48
  presumably because most of the biosphere wouldn't be able to
• 29:50
  survive that. The darkness, the cold, the loss
• 29:53
  of photosynthesis and all of the primary production.
• 29:56
  So like, what does that do? How do you, how would you
• 29:58
  represent that in the planetary boundaries framework?
• 30:00
  It's a different kind of transgression from like from
• 30:02
  making it too hot by emitting all this carbon and, and, and
• 30:04
  destroying species and our normal agriculture and all of
• 30:07
  that. Like, yeah, so give us a nuclear
• 30:10
  war on planetary boundaries. No, and unfortunately it can be
• 30:17
  very well represented in the planet boundary framework.
• 30:19
  I mean the the control variable that would catch it first is the
• 30:24
  novel entities boundary because that's where nuclear waste or
• 30:30
  nuclear a nuclear war would be represented through the novel
• 30:35
  entities loading of of radioactive materials in the
• 30:39
  earth system. Then you would immediately have
• 30:43
  an exponential rise of radiative forcing, which would be caught
• 30:46
  through the control variable on climate, which would go in deep
• 30:49
  red immediately you would kill off all life on earth, which
• 30:54
  would immediately push the genetic diversity and functional
• 30:57
  diversity boundaries right into the deep red zone.
• 31:00
  So they so, so here you have climate and biodiversity would
• 31:03
  be would be blinking, you know, at a, at a, at a force majeure
• 31:08
  point immediately you would probably destroy the freshwater
• 31:13
  cycle. So you would also get both green
• 31:16
  and blue water control variables which are set dependent on, on
• 31:20
  the variability during the Holocene.
• 31:22
  But you would, you know, we've seen that already now that
• 31:25
  already at 1.5°C of warming that we see today, the impacts on the
• 31:30
  holological cycle is very dramatic because you, you get so
• 31:34
  much more heat into the Earth's system.
• 31:37
  So you evaporate so much more water.
• 31:39
  So we're powering up the logical cycle which deviates outside of
• 31:43
  the Holocene range. And you would probably go,
• 31:46
  currently we have 110,000 cubic kilometers of precipitation
• 31:50
  falling on land each year. I don't know what would happen
• 31:53
  in a nuclear war, but you would certainly bump that up to levels
• 31:58
  that would also put you in a deep red force measure blinking
• 32:02
  on freshwater. And so so I think you would you
• 32:06
  would immediately see a planet assessment with the planet
• 32:11
  boundary framework showing that that we would be in deep, deep
• 32:15
  trouble triggered by this novel entities smash represented
• 32:22
  across multiple boundaries. Yeah.
• 32:25
  Well, that's, that's good to know.
• 32:26
  It can, it can show that. I mean, it wouldn't.
• 32:29
  Help us much, but it would give us a diagnostic.
• 32:32
  Exactly. There was some pushback when
• 32:35
  Planetary Boundaries was first proposed.
• 32:37
  I'm a member of my friends at the Breakthrough Institute
• 32:39
  writing quite a harsh paper. Well, rebuttal, and I'm going to
• 32:46
  struggle to characterize that usefully, but I think it was
• 32:50
  something along the lines that these were sort of too
• 32:52
  subjective, that they were, you know, normative and that they,
• 32:57
  so the idea that there were scientifically objective numbers
• 33:01
  that you could apply to these things were they pushed back on.
• 33:04
  And I think also they were a bit triggered by seeing planetary
• 33:07
  boundaries as basically just a reinterpretation of the old
• 33:10
  limits to growth philosophy from the 1970s.
• 33:13
  Was there anything in that? What was your response to some
• 33:16
  of these these concerns? Yes, so well, now I think
• 33:23
  there's so much water under the bridge.
• 33:25
  I think 1 can be quite transparent about what happened
• 33:29
  then. And you know, to be honest,
• 33:33
  Mark, this, this, this critique came out was timed with a real
• 33:41
  plus 20. It was, it was very, very
• 33:45
  deliberately timed at a time when all heads of state gathered
• 33:50
  in Rio to develop the Sustainable Development Goals
• 33:53
  agenda. And and that was when the plenty
• 33:57
  boundary framework was was communicated very, very closely
• 34:02
  with Ban Ki Moon and the whole team that was developing the
• 34:06
  Sustainable Development Goals framework.
• 34:08
  Actually, Planet Boundaries was even written in as a proposed
• 34:11
  guiding framework for for the UN in the in the in the 20 year
• 34:19
  follow up of the Rio conventions.
• 34:21
  And exactly at that time, the Breakthrough Institute decided
• 34:26
  to create this, this not questioning the framework, but
• 34:30
  just doing what skepticism and denialism has been very clever
• 34:36
  doing for for decades on climate and for decades on tobacco to
• 34:40
  simply instill uncertainty that there that we don't, we cannot
• 34:45
  say for certain that this really is robust enough.
• 34:48
  And and that I think was ultimately the objective here
• 34:54
  because it it, it's silenced down immediately afterwards.
• 34:57
  It, it was a report, a Gray report that was just thrown out
• 35:02
  there just saying that look here, we cannot quantify these
• 35:06
  things at a planetary scale. And the, these are the, these
• 35:10
  are not well established numbers.
• 35:12
  And it, it was kind of, it was a kind of a critique that was
• 35:19
  quite shallow. But in the end, it, it did
• 35:24
  create exactly what they, in my view were after, namely the
• 35:28
  sense that this is not scientifically established and,
• 35:34
  and, and, and they succeeded in part as well because
• 35:38
  particularly the Brazilian government became too concerned
• 35:41
  about naming planet boundaries. Specifically, as you may
• 35:45
  remember, there was a very big debate between the the civil
• 35:49
  society groups in Rio versus the policy groups.
• 35:53
  The civil society groups wanted to maintain planetary boundaries
• 35:56
  in the texts. So I'm, I'm not saying that this
• 36:00
  that this Breakthrough Institute report was, was the tipping
• 36:03
  factor here, but but I just to, just to place it in, in context
• 36:07
  that I, I would argue that that report had had very little
• 36:11
  substance in its critique. And, and we did provide a
• 36:16
  rebuttal and, and, and wrote that and published that.
• 36:20
  And after that, I feel that there was very little critique
• 36:26
  coming back from, from the breakthrough institutes
• 36:29
  following on that. And then today it's completely
• 36:31
  silenced out. And, and not only that, we've
• 36:34
  actually come to a point today, Mark, that the Planet 2 boundary
• 36:38
  framework is, is so comprehensive and so robust that
• 36:44
  it's almost becoming a more, let's say, appealing and, and
• 36:50
  policy and business aligned framework than the climate
• 36:53
  science itself. That when, when you talk about
• 36:57
  freshwater, air pollution, chemicals, biodiversity, land as
• 37:04
  one, you know, agenda it, it is much less, much more difficult
• 37:13
  for, for skeptics or denialists to question you because you're
• 37:18
  simply, you simply addressing so many of the, of the fundamentals
• 37:24
  that are impossible to question. I mean, nobody can question the
• 37:27
  importance of freshwater, clean air and, and, and functioning
• 37:32
  ecosystems. And, and we can today prove to
• 37:35
  the planet boundary science, which by the way, the climate
• 37:37
  science does so well today also, that if you do not come back
• 37:43
  into a safe operating space on the nature boundaries, you also
• 37:46
  fail on the climate boundary. We, we can today show so clearly
• 37:50
  that even if you phase out coal, oil and gas, you still fail on
• 37:53
  the Paris climate agreement. Because if you continue allowing
• 37:57
  deforestation and loss of biodiversity and overuse of
• 38:00
  freshwater and degradation of land and overloading of
• 38:03
  nitrogen, phosphorus and air pollutants, you will also push
• 38:07
  the Earth system outside of the 2°C boundary.
• 38:10
  Because it all boils down to resilience.
• 38:12
  It boils down to the capacity of the Earth system to buffer
• 38:15
  stress and, and this, this has, this was not the case in the
• 38:21
  beginning. It was not the case at the Rio
• 38:22
  Plus 20 when this Breakthrough Institute report came out.
• 38:26
  And, but, but now 50 years down the line, if you open the IPCC
• 38:32
  assessment or if you open the IPBS assessment on ecosystems,
• 38:36
  or if you go into the United Nations Convention on
• 38:39
  Desertification, increasingly you see Earth's system approach
• 38:44
  to addressing the, the specific areas for the simple reason that
• 38:48
  we, we see how, how different boundaries are hitting back on,
• 38:52
  on their sister boundaries. And, and, and the biggest factor
• 38:56
  is how the Earth system interacts with the climate
• 38:59
  system. And so by the end of the day, I,
• 39:05
  you know, I, I think, I think that the early days of critique,
• 39:09
  I mean, all critique to the bending boundary framework when,
• 39:12
  when it's, well, let's say, when it's honest, I think is really
• 39:16
  valuable, is incredibly valuable.
• 39:19
  But, but that report is specific today.
• 39:21
  I'm I'm really critical to to the way it was handled.
• 39:25
  I mean, I was pissed off at the Breakthrough Institute as well,
• 39:28
  because it was just six months after, after I'd written my
• 39:32
  book, The God Species, which was all about the planetary
• 39:35
  boundaries. And I, I love the framework, I
• 39:37
  love the way the boundaries interact.
• 39:38
  I thought it was a really useful way to address environmental
• 39:42
  challenges so that they didn't look overwhelming and impossible
• 39:45
  to tackle because there's only 9.
• 39:47
  And but you do need to recognise how biodiversity and climate and
• 39:49
  water, water and all of that, all of those things interact.
• 39:52
  So you don't just solve one in a singular way, which then effects
• 39:55
  all the other 8. So yes.
• 39:58
  But you know, that was, that was my, that's my selfish concern
• 40:02
  against the Brexit Institute too.
• 40:03
  And that was an earlier, earlier version variant of the Brexit
• 40:07
  shoot. But I'll have to ask Ted
• 40:08
  Nordhaus to come and. See whether he still he still
• 40:12
  holds to that view, maybe in a future episode, but you know,
• 40:15
  with the with the God species book, which by the way, was my
• 40:17
  least successful book. Not because I think it was just
• 40:21
  because I was trying to do something a bit weird, which was
• 40:25
  to put a kind of eco modernist glass on, on what is
• 40:28
  fundamentally quite a environmentalist perspective.
• 40:32
  But I, I thought it was useful to do that because otherwise you
• 40:36
  do get a kind of limits to growth perspective.
• 40:38
  And a lot of people have interpreted the planetary bounds
• 40:40
  this way. It's like it's a, there's a
• 40:41
  fundamental level beyond which humans cannot, you know, human,
• 40:45
  the human species cannot grow or cannot develop or cannot
• 40:47
  continue to innovate and do new things and, and have new
• 40:50
  technologies. And I wanted to show actually
• 40:52
  that if you just take hello nuclear, that's a good example.
• 40:55
  Environmentalists at that time hated it.
• 40:57
  But actually it could help us meet several of the challenges
• 41:00
  of the boundaries, so long as you don't put radioactivity
• 41:02
  everywhere and transgress that one.
• 41:03
  So like I thought that was useful was, was to show that it
• 41:07
  was resilient to lots of different political kind of
• 41:10
  conceptions. I don't know whether you agree
• 41:12
  with that, you know, in the in the sort of in hindsight or not.
• 41:15
  I totally agree. And, and it's good that you, you
• 41:19
  raise the limits to growth. I mean, I, I agree respects to,
• 41:22
  to the limits of growth and I've, I've worked quite recently
• 41:26
  with, with Jurgen Anders and, you know, have good, good
• 41:31
  relations. But, but there's a fundamental
• 41:33
  difference between the limits of growth and the planetary
• 41:35
  boundaries And the, and the difference is that in the limits
• 41:38
  of growth, the team at MIT integrated both human needs
• 41:48
  technology and the capacity of, of the environmental systems to,
• 41:54
  to deliver against those needs and our ability to, to, to
• 42:00
  practice or to deliver on those needs.
• 42:03
  So it was, it was from the very outset an assessment of how much
• 42:08
  does humanity need and how much can we perform and how much can
• 42:11
  the can the environment provide. And as soon as, as the needs
• 42:16
  exceeded what the environment could provide, you were in
• 42:19
  overshoot and overshoot led to impacts which were costly.
• 42:25
  The plenty of boundary framework does something completely
• 42:27
  different. It actually, you know, the, the,
• 42:31
  the thought experiment that I think helps a lot here is that
• 42:35
  the first thing we do is we take all humans on planet Earth and
• 42:40
  place them on another planet. So we we simply say for a moment
• 42:44
  just just sit down on another planet and then we look at at
• 42:49
  Earth and we ask the question, what will it take
• 42:53
  biogeochemically to keep the planet in a hollow scene in the
• 42:57
  glacial state? That's the question without
• 43:00
  humans, just irrespective, humans just understand the
• 43:04
  biophysical functioning of their system and that's where you get
• 43:08
  the 9 boundaries and that's where you get the control
• 43:10
  variables and that's where you get the quantifications of the
• 43:13
  safe boundaries. We make no assumptions of how
• 43:16
  much food is required or energy is required or what technologies
• 43:20
  we have, or you have nuclear power plants, or if you have
• 43:23
  wind offshore. We don't care about that.
• 43:26
  We only set the boundaries on keeping the planet as close as
• 43:30
  possible to the Holocene rate range of variability.
• 43:35
  Once that is done, we get a safe operating space.
• 43:38
  Think of it as a as a football pitch.
• 43:40
  You know, you get the line. Within that line you can play
• 43:44
  your game. There's even a referee that
• 43:47
  blows a whistle if the ball goes out.
• 43:48
  So you're not allowed to go outside of that pitch.
• 43:51
  The boundaries are like those lines when you play a game of
• 43:56
  football or, you know, whatever game you play, you put humanity
• 44:00
  back and then you can play your game inside those lines.
• 44:04
  And we know that you can play your a very lousy game or you
• 44:08
  can play a game like like Messi or Maradona or, or, you know,
• 44:14
  really Champions League type game.
• 44:16
  So that is what it's all about. What game do we play within the
• 44:20
  space? And, and my conclusion is, and
• 44:23
  the conclusion of the science is that nothing hinders us to be
• 44:27
  prosperous, equitable and successful within the
• 44:30
  boundaries, safe operating space.
• 44:32
  So we're only providing a boundary that quantifies for all
• 44:39
  the systems that regulates the function of the planet, which
• 44:41
  means actually that every boundary translates to a budget.
• 44:45
  And the budget has to be, you know, operated within.
• 44:49
  And we have so much evidence that when you have constraints
• 44:52
  like that, you actually are more innovative, you're more likely
• 44:56
  to be efficient, you're more likely to actually be more
• 44:59
  competitive and, and actually advance yourself towards a more
• 45:03
  modern future. So that this, this business of
• 45:06
  thinking that we have this infinite planet that we can
• 45:10
  simply grow infinitely on leads to inefficiency and
• 45:15
  unsustainable outcomes. But putting these constraints
• 45:18
  does not hinder economic development at all.
• 45:21
  On the contrary, I think it actually, you know, stimulates
• 45:25
  faster efficient resource use. So, so I'm entirely with you
• 45:30
  here. And, and the limits to growth
• 45:33
  had the same outset, but because it, it merged these factors
• 45:38
  together, human needs, human technology and environmental
• 45:43
  limits, it was criticized because it was criticized on
• 45:47
  good grounds that the limits of growth underestimated our
• 45:50
  ability to innovate. And, and that is something that
• 45:54
  the planet boundary framework completely deliberates itself
• 45:57
  from it. It makes no assumptions on, on
• 46:00
  this factor. And just to give you one
• 46:02
  example, how, how this has led to a lot of debates, the
• 46:05
  nitrogen boundary is, is set very, very, it's a very, very
• 46:10
  constrained boundary. It's, it's, you know, to
• 46:13
  basically you have to reduce reactive nitrogen use as a
• 46:17
  fertilizer with 75% to come back into the safe boundary level.
• 46:21
  And we set the boundary level only on how much reactive
• 46:25
  nitrogen can the biosphere tolerate before you get major
• 46:29
  anoxic events and then flip over the functioning of the living
• 46:34
  biosphere. And nitrogen.
• 46:36
  Scientists over the years have published papers saying that
• 46:39
  this is impossible because you, you cannot feed humanity within
• 46:44
  the safe boundary of nitrogen, even if you apply the most, the
• 46:49
  best agricultural practices we know.
• 46:52
  So you, you do conservation tillage, you do regenerative
• 46:54
  agriculture, you do the best we can and we're still, we need
• 46:58
  more nitrogen than you're allowing us to use within your
• 47:01
  budget of the planet to body science.
• 47:03
  My answer to that is saying, well, sorry, sorry, we, we only
• 47:08
  take the planet into account. I've been suggested several
• 47:12
  times, shouldn't you adjust the nitrogen boundary so that we can
• 47:16
  come to reasonable levels so that we actually at least can
• 47:19
  feed humanity within your safe space?
• 47:22
  And I say look at that would completely destroy the framework
• 47:25
  because the framework is only about stability of the planet.
• 47:28
  So, So yes, we have a headache here.
• 47:31
  I've so far seen not one scientific analysis, even the
• 47:35
  most optimistic transformations analysis that can bring us back
• 47:39
  to the nitrogen, phosphorus boundaries and still feed
• 47:43
  humanity in in a stable way. It's it's we're not far away
• 47:46
  from being able to do it, but it's still a major challenge.
• 47:50
  And I think this is something we have to simply recognize that
• 47:56
  that that that is one of the challenges we're facing.
• 47:59
  But I think also it's one of the values of the planet boundary
• 48:02
  framework that it stays strictly on on quantifying the same space
• 48:07
  for the planet, not not for human needs.
• 48:10
  And so these figures are objective and you and they're
• 48:13
  scientifically objective, correct and and defensible in
• 48:17
  scientific terms largely because of tipping points right on them.
• 48:21
  Or is it about degradation? And are they a bit different in
• 48:24
  the different boundaries? Because I want, I want to talk a
• 48:26
  bit more about where we are in the current situation and how
• 48:28
  close to climate tipping points you think we might be.
• 48:31
  Yeah. No, you, this is, you're
• 48:33
  absolutely right. We for the different boundaries,
• 48:36
  we use different lines of evidence to quantify the safe
• 48:40
  boundaries because we don't have tipping point behavior across
• 48:44
  all the boundaries and don't have evidence of tipping points
• 48:46
  across all the boundaries, at least not yet.
• 48:49
  So line of evidence #1 where do we place the quantitative safe
• 48:56
  boundaries to avoid cross tipping points?
• 48:58
  Yes, line of evidence too is actually that we have more and
• 49:02
  more data showing the range of variability for the control
• 49:05
  variables across the Holocene. So for freshwater for example is
• 49:09
  based on on avoiding to go outside a kind of A1 standard
• 49:16
  deviation outside of the most extreme variation of the
• 49:18
  holological cycle during the past 10,000 years.
• 49:21
  And then other a third line of evidence is the evidence where
• 49:25
  you see aggregation of collapse of, for example, freshwater
• 49:31
  systems at scale and what that could imply as a feedback on,
• 49:36
  for example, the climate system. So no tipping point, but just
• 49:39
  that that let's say aggregate buffering capacity.
• 49:43
  If that is lost, then that can also qualify as a as evidence
• 49:48
  for for quantifying the boundary.
• 49:50
  But so there are different lines of evidence, but ultimately it
• 49:54
  is about avoiding irreversible changes, which is essentially
• 49:58
  tipping point dynamics. And so moving on to where we
• 50:03
  are, and I've seen a couple of your more recent talks and you
• 50:06
  know, you sound really concerned about the current state of the
• 50:10
  climate. There's this fairly rapid
• 50:13
  warming in the last couple of years, uh, which seems to be not
• 50:16
  fully explained. Tell us, you know, is this
• 50:19
  keeping you awake at night? Well, no, I, I, I continue
• 50:25
  sleeping quite well, to be honest.
• 50:27
  But I, you know, I've never had reason to be as concerned as
• 50:33
  today. And it's really not only about
• 50:36
  the geopolitics in the world, it really is the, the, the
• 50:39
  scientific evidence we have that we're not making progress.
• 50:43
  We're not being, being the curves.
• 50:45
  We're going deeper and deeper into the red zone on the
• 50:47
  planetary boundaries and, and not surprisingly, therefore,
• 50:51
  we're, we're starting to see the first indications of a planet
• 50:55
  losing its strength to buffer the stress caused by our
• 51:00
  unsustainable abuse. And this is what what really,
• 51:03
  really makes me nervous that we're seeing an acceleration of
• 51:07
  warming. We're seeing forest systems
• 51:11
  losing its capacity to take up carbon.
• 51:14
  We're seeing massive changes in in the marine systems, the
• 51:20
  latest data on the 4th consecutive and worst ever
• 51:23
  bleaching event recording collapse of of tropical coral
• 51:27
  reef systems. The, these are early signs of
• 51:31
  UMM, of a planet, which UMM is indicating bio geochemical
• 51:38
  reduction of its, of its resilience.
• 51:41
  And, and this is something which is not well recognized that the,
• 51:48
  the moment we are, I mean, we are in trouble, but the moment
• 51:51
  we are in real trouble is the moment the planet shifts from
• 51:54
  being what I call our best friend, meaning continue to
• 51:59
  provide this, this capacity to reduce heat imbalance by
• 52:05
  absorbing heat in the ocean and carbon on land.
• 52:08
  And you know, it's, it's one of these basic facts that one of
• 52:11
  the, the key functions of the Earth's system is to have ice
• 52:17
  sheets. And that is a captured in the
• 52:19
  Panamani framework through the climate boundary in particular.
• 52:23
  So that gives us albedo, which is it reflects back heat to
• 52:27
  space thanks to the white surface of ice, but also that
• 52:31
  four percent, 4% of the heat injected by our fossil fuel
• 52:36
  burning is consumed when melting ice.
• 52:40
  So, so the very effect of of accelerated ice melt is actually
• 52:44
  a buffering function of the Earth system.
• 52:46
  And now we're seeing that ice melt is accelerating and we are
• 52:51
  seeing loss of inland glaciers much faster than we had
• 52:55
  expected. And then all of these, this is
• 52:59
  an early warning sign of, of a system losing resilience.
• 53:03
  And that is what what the planet bounded framework is
• 53:05
  fundamentally about. So yes, there there is real
• 53:09
  reason for concern. And finally, you know that this
• 53:13
  is something that is often misunderstood as well out out in
• 53:16
  media. It's like that that I am, or we
• 53:20
  scientists are kind of raising our our language and our volume
• 53:24
  of concern increasingly just because we want to be heard
• 53:27
  more. But, but the reality is that,
• 53:30
  you know, already in 2018 when the IPCC 1.5°C report came out
• 53:36
  and when we had published our second planet boundary
• 53:40
  assessment, we said that we are entering now a decisive decade
• 53:44
  for humanity's future on Earth. I mean, you could find my quotes
• 53:47
  on that, you know, now almost 10 years back.
• 53:51
  And that the purpose of saying that was not that we need to
• 53:54
  solve all the problems by 20-30, but we need to bend the curves
• 53:58
  by 2020 and, and have a decisive, a movement back
• 54:04
  towards a safe landing within the safe operating space by
• 54:07
  20-30. So cutting emissions by half by
• 54:10
  20-30, halting loss of biodiversity, shifting the
• 54:14
  loading of nitrogen, you know, all the boundaries need to need
• 54:17
  to have seen by 20-30 a decisive movement in the in the right
• 54:22
  direction so that we can have a safe landing sometime around 24
• 54:26
  to 2050. Now we are in 2025, we're
• 54:29
  halfway into this decade and we're making no progress.
• 54:33
  We're making 0 progress. We're actually moving still in
• 54:37
  the wrong direction. Is it so surprising then that
• 54:40
  that we, that we, you know, raise our volume of, of concern?
• 54:45
  Of course it's not. I mean, it's we, it's the
• 54:47
  evidence is that the earth system is losing.
• 54:50
  It's, it's faster than we had expected.
• 54:52
  Actually, it's like the resilience seems to be going
• 54:54
  down faster than we expected and we're not making progress.
• 54:58
  Combine these two together and of course it it lands in in in a
• 55:03
  in a signal of deep concern. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I think
• 55:07
  personally, I'm emerging from a two year period of optimism into
• 55:12
  something else. And it's partly these
• 55:15
  indicators, partly what's happening to the, to the climate
• 55:17
  out there and just this very rapid warming that we've seen in
• 55:21
  the oceans, which is like off the charts from what you might
• 55:24
  expect from, you know, the, even the background level of, of
• 55:28
  warming. And, you know, the optimism was
• 55:32
  about everyone's net, all the net 0 targets, China having a
• 55:35
  peaking date for coal, the big progress in electric vehicles
• 55:39
  and batteries and solar and all of that.
• 55:41
  And, you know, looking and that the projections and we'd be
• 55:45
  like, all right, we'll be somewhere.
• 55:46
  You'd be about 2 1/2°. It wasn't going to be 6°, which
• 55:49
  was my like, worst case scenario from a decade and a half ago.
• 55:52
  And that's, you know, huge progress and isn't it great?
• 55:54
  But here we are at 1.6. And as you say, these, we're
• 55:58
  seeing the worldwide collapse of coral reefs.
• 56:01
  We're going to be seeing the total loss of Arctic sea ice
• 56:05
  probably within a few years from now and which will change the
• 56:09
  energy balance at the top of the planet.
• 56:11
  There's some signs that the biosphere, so forests as you're
• 56:15
  saying, isn't aren't, isn't absorbing as much carbon as used
• 56:18
  to be the case. So more's going to accumulate in
• 56:20
  the atmosphere. It just feels like such a
• 56:22
  dangerous time. And at the same moment you have
• 56:25
  the Trump administration coming in and eliminating even the
• 56:27
  mention of climate from all of its all of its activities,
• 56:31
  communications and pushing, trying to push us back into the
• 56:33
  fossil fuels fuel age. And like, these are, these are
• 56:37
  thinking human beings. They, you know, so the response
• 56:40
  to scientists saying we've got a problem here isn't necessarily
• 56:44
  to, for Homo sapiens to say, well, let's fix it.
• 56:47
  It might well be to just say let's pretend it doesn't exist.
• 56:50
  Let's go backwards. Let's fundamentally deny it and
• 56:53
  even go as far as almost in a malignant way, trying to make
• 56:56
  things worse. So it's it's difficult I think
• 56:59
  to be optimistic as we sit here right now.
• 57:02
  No, it is. It's very difficult to be
• 57:03
  optimistic right now. I mean, the only light in the
• 57:06
  tunnel as I see it today, I mean there are two lights in the
• 57:10
  tunnel. I mean #1 is that we, we know
• 57:14
  that we are in a very mature state when it comes to
• 57:19
  sustainability. And one should never forget
• 57:21
  that, that we have not only made progress, but we've actually
• 57:25
  built a strong foundation. And we see that opinion poll
• 57:30
  after opinion poll that 6070% of citizens around the world, they
• 57:33
  do still, you know, they are concerned about climate change.
• 57:36
  They trust climate science. They want climate action.
• 57:39
  So this is, we should never forget that, that we're, we're
• 57:42
  not suddenly, you know, sliding backwards and just saying
• 57:46
  goodbye to, to, to the, to the basic understanding that we have
• 57:51
  a global planetary scale problem.
• 57:54
  And secondly, the, the light internal is, is what you alluded
• 57:57
  to. I mean, I think it's a, it's
• 57:58
  clear that we're seeing double digit penetration of sustainable
• 58:03
  solutions across many of the boundaries.
• 58:07
  It's not only on, on energy, it's also on the food system, on
• 58:11
  aerosol loading, on chemicals on I mean, we haven't signed the
• 58:17
  plastic treaty, but you know, there are global frameworks
• 58:21
  that, that are being worked on in, in a very serious way.
• 58:26
  So, so those are at least 2 lines of, of development that
• 58:30
  one has to kind of hold on to very tight at this point.
• 58:34
  Right as we speak. There is the, the planet change
• 58:40
  gathering in, in Paris. You soon have the the London
• 58:43
  Climate Week, all the gatherings that I've been to recently, a
• 58:48
  big ocean summit in Paris hosted by President Macron.
• 58:53
  There's a very strong willingness to to stay on track.
• 58:57
  And that collective action is absolute, absolutely needed in
• 59:00
  this moment of backtracking from the US administration.
• 59:03
  So I think it's very unfortunate what we're seeing in the US, but
• 59:08
  I, I think it would be a big mistake to, to let that dominate
• 59:13
  too much what we are the, the efforts that we are still trying
• 59:19
  to make. And, and, and as a closing
• 59:21
  remark on, on this mark is also that, you know, one of one of
• 59:26
  the beauties in this whole story is that a question is, is it
• 59:31
  possible to, to, to move into exponential positive change?
• 59:36
  And, and I think the answer is unequivocally yes.
• 59:39
  And and how come? Well, it's simply because we
• 59:43
  know that the solutions that decarbonize sustainable within
• 59:49
  planetary boundary related solutions for human development
• 59:53
  have multiple benefits. In the other end, better for
• 59:58
  health, better for prosperity, better for competitiveness is
• 1:00:01
  more advanced. It's simply more attractive,
• 1:00:03
  more stable, more secure. And, and this is generally
• 1:00:08
  forgotten we've we've we've unfortunately allowed ourselves
• 1:00:11
  to talk about all these planetary boundary challenges as
• 1:00:15
  environmental issues, which are all about protecting, conserving
• 1:00:19
  and backing off. It's it's incredible that we can
• 1:00:23
  still allow voices to say, well, we can't afford to solve this
• 1:00:27
  problem because it means less socio economic development.
• 1:00:31
  As we know, this is, this is simply an incorrect statement.
• 1:00:35
  We know that investing in sustainability has of course, a,
• 1:00:38
  a, a transaction phase. There is a, there's an
• 1:00:41
  investment phase. I mean, we've, we've powered the
• 1:00:43
  global economy for 150 years with coal, oil and gas, and now
• 1:00:47
  we're going to power it with renewable energies.
• 1:00:49
  Of course there's a, there's a transition phase, but we know we
• 1:00:52
  all become winners in the other end.
• 1:00:54
  And, and I think this is something that is really
• 1:00:57
  reassuring because given that we have, you know, we're sitting
• 1:01:01
  with the, with the winning plan. And therefore exponentials can
• 1:01:06
  occur because it is when, when large enough minorities adopt
• 1:01:11
  these winning strategies that they of course become
• 1:01:15
  exponential for the simple reason that they're so
• 1:01:17
  attractive that they simply out compete the, the planet damaging
• 1:01:22
  incumbents. So.
• 1:01:23
  So I think working along that path must still be the the line
• 1:01:28
  of action in a way. Well, thanks so much, Johan, for
• 1:01:32
  ending on a positive note, because I think there's nothing
• 1:01:35
  more disempowering than than doomism.
• 1:01:38
  And you know, it's we, we've, we've got to work our hardest
• 1:01:42
  to, to, to innovate and to accelerate and to do all of
• 1:01:45
  these amazing things that you've outlined so eloquently.
• 1:01:47
  I think the bad idea that you might have been saving the world
• 1:01:50
  from for the last 15 years, Johannes, there's no such thing
• 1:01:53
  as plan to boundaries. You've been a huge influence on
• 1:01:55
  my work and I think you've been a huge influence on, on, on
• 1:01:57
  global, global environmental science.
• 1:01:59
  So keep doing what you do and all power to your elbow.
• 1:02:04
  And thanks for inviting me. Great.
• 1:02:05
  Great talking to you, Mark. Thanks, Johan.
• 1:02:11
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• 1:02:14
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• 1:02:17
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• 1:02:19
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• 1:02:21
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• 1:02:35
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