Breaking Boundaries

CONTENTS

How to use this eBook

Foreword

Introduction

ACT I

1. Three revolutions that shaped our planet

2. A Scottish janitor and a Serbian mathematician discover Earth’s hair trigger

3. A wise man arrives

4. The Goldilocks epoch

Color plates A

Sleeping giants: Antarctica

Rupture with the past

The Earthshot

ACT II

5. Three scientific insights have changed how we view Earth

6. Planetary boundaries

7. Hothouse Earth

8. Emergency on planet Earth

Color plates B

Sleeping giants: The Amazon

The Great Acceleration

Planetary boundaries

ACT III

9. Planetary stewardship

10. The energy transition

11. Feeding 10 billion people within planetary boundaries

12. Inequality is destabilizing Earth

Color plates C

Novel entities

The network effect

A planet transformed

13. Building tomorrow’s cities

14. The population bomb defused

15. Taming the technosphere

16. A global economy within planetary boundaries

Color plates D

Pathways to stabilize Earth

Look back at what we have achieved

The Global Safety Net

The rise in complexity: Major ruptures in the evolution of Earth

17. Earthshot politics and policies

18. The roaring 2020s: Four tipping points are converging

19. Wise Earth

Sources

Acknowledgments

Picture credits

About the Authors

Copyright

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FOREWORD

GRETA THUNBERG

SWEDISH ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

A stable planet is a necessary condition for the well-being of our civilization. And a stable planet for life as we know it requires an atmosphere that does not contain too much greenhouse gas. This is basic science.

The safety limit for the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is thought to be around 350 parts per million. We reached that landmark sometime in 1987, and in 2020 we surpassed 415 parts per million. The world has not experienced such high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide for at least 3 million years. This increase is happening at an unprecedented speed. Half of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have been emitted since 1990—in the past 30 years. As a result, our functioning and balanced atmosphere has become a finite natural resource. A limited resource that today is being used up primarily by a very small number of people. This is the heart of the problem: climate injustice. It is not only an issue between nations; it is an issue within all societies.

The richest 10 percent of the world’s population emit more carbon dioxide than the remaining 90 percent. On average, the top 1 percent of income earners emit 81 tons (74 metric tons) of carbon dioxide per person every year. For the 50 percent of the world population with the lowest incomes, that same per capita figure is 0.76 tons (0.69 metric tons). These high emitters are the people we consider to be successful. They are our leaders, our celebrities, our role models. The people we aspire to be like. Or just about anyone with a high enough income. There are many elephants in the room when it comes to the climate crisis, and climate injustice is undoubtedly one of the biggest.

Many people say that we should not turn the climate crisis into a moral issue. This will only result in inflicting guilt and shame, and that will be counterproductive. And yet, the Paris Agreement of 2015—the only functioning tool we have at our disposal today—is a treaty completely founded on equity and morality, with all its nonbinding and voluntary goals and targets.

Furthermore, the school strike movement is based firmly on the idea of climate justice. On morals. Or guilt, if you so wish. And the reason the movement has been so successful is probably because the dire consequences of climate inaction no longer just threaten people far away—now they involve everyone’s children. The consequences have moved closer to those of us who had until this point felt fairly safe. People have started to get scared. Scared as in really frightened for the well-being and safety of their loved ones.

If lowering our emissions of greenhouse gases were one of humanity’s main objectives, we could start right away. When we humans really put our minds and resources into something, we can achieve almost anything. Just take the quick and effective development of vaccines against COVID-19. Unfortunately, though, our objective today is not to lower our emissions. That is not what we are fighting for. We are fighting to maintain our way of life.

The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period, said US President George H. W. Bush just before the 1992 UN Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, not much has changed. Most world leaders would probably still say the same, if not through their words, then certainly through their actions. Or inactions, rather.

So, instead of lowering our emissions we search for solutions. Solutions to what, we should ask? Solutions to a crisis that the vast majority of us cannot even begin to fully understand? Or solutions that allow us to be able to go on like before?

Well, why not both you say? But the sad answer is that we have left it too late for that to be possible. If you read the current best available science reports—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR1.5), the Emissions Gap Report produced by the United Nations Environment Program, and the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—you will see that the climate and ecological crisis can no longer be solved within today’s financial or legal systems.

For us to stay below 2.7°F (1.5°C) global warming, or even well below 3.6°F (2°C), we will need to start tearing up valid contracts and deals. We will need to leave assets in the ground. We will need to boost every imaginable carbon sink to the very maximum. A standing tree must then be worth more than a dead one. We will need to transfer to a zero-carbon society while leaving no one behind in the process. And that is no longer possible within today’s societies. The need for system change is no longer an opinion; it is a fact.

The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved by individual changes alone. Nor by the market, for that matter. We need huge, broad political and structural changes on an unprecedented scale, in all aspects of society to quote the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, those changes are nowhere in sight today. Nor are they likely to appear anytime soon.

When the first vaccines for COVID-19 were rolled out in December 2020, health services across the globe called upon celebrities to receive some of the first shots, as a way of convincing others to do the same. This is a well-proven method; it is how we humans work. We are social animals—herd animals, if you like—we follow our leaders and copy the behavior of those around us.

According to the latest Emissions Gap Report, Popular debate has often pitted ‘behavior change’ and ‘system change’ against each other, presented as a tradeoff between two choices. . . . however, system change and behavior change are two sides of the same coin.

The climate and ecological crisis is, in fact, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. A crisis for which there will be no vaccine. It is a crisis that involves everything from climate and ecological breakdown, loss of fertile soils and biodiversity, and acidification of the oceans, to loss of forests and wildlife and—indeed—emergence of new diseases and new pandemics.

During the five years since the Paris Agreement was signed, a lot has happened. But the action needed is still nowhere in sight. The gap between what we need to do and what is actually being done is widening by the minute. We are still speeding in the wrong direction.

Commitments are being made, distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big speeches are being given. Yet, when it comes to the immediate action we need to take, we are still in a state of complete denial, as we continue to waste our time creating new loopholes justified by empty words and creative accounting.

The prospect of solving the climate and ecological crisis is not very hopeful, to say the least. This bleak outlook is probably part of the reason why the situation is so incredibly hard to communicate in our age of social media likes and celebrity culture. Nevertheless, we have to tell it like it is, because only then can there be true hope. We should be adult enough to handle the truth. And until we are, the children will continue to be the adults.

The science dictates that we now need to do the seemingly impossible. And that is sadly no longer a metaphor. That is where we are. So, instead of focusing on vague, incomplete, insufficient hypothetical targets set up by people in power, we should put all our efforts into communicating the reality. Because, despite what you may think, the vast majority of us are not aware of the situation we face. Or rather, we have not yet been made aware.

And that’s where the true hope lies. How, you may ask?

Well, just imagine how many leading politicians, newspapers, TV stations, public figures, celebrities, and influencers there are in the world today. And imagine if just a small number of them started to treat the climate crisis like the crisis it is. Imagine who they might reach. Imagine if millions and millions of everyday people like you and me were really aware of what we are up against. Then everything would change overnight. We can still do this—but only if we speak the truth.

People often ask me if there is one thing that they can do that will really make a difference, and if so—what is it? My answer is always: inform and educate yourself as much as you possibly can and then spread that awareness to others. Because once you understand the full meaning and real consequences of our situation, then you will know what to do.

Our hope lies in the facts and the knowledge that make up the current best available science, and that this knowledge can spread fast and far enough. That’s where you come in. And that’s what reading this book is all about.

January 2021

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INTRODUCTION

Dear friends,

Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal.

ANTÓNIO GUTERRES

UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL

It is night. You are driving hard down a steep, winding road. No barriers or guardrails protect you or provide any warning you are careening too close to the edge. The headlights flicker out. At any moment, the car could skid off the road and fly into the ravine, where the vehicle and its occupants would rapidly change state. The children in the back are screaming.

You might think the narrow road, the murky darkness, and steep cliffs would force you to slow down, but instead you bump along in the dark, taking hairpin turns at high speed.

This may seem like a nightmare, but humanity is taking the same risk with our planet and our common future. Earth’s life-support system is the sum of the planet’s ice sheets, oceans, forests, rivers and lakes, and rich diversity of life, as well as gigantic recirculations of carbon, water, nitrogen, and phosphorus. This system is now most definitely unstable. At any moment, we could push it over the edge, taking us—7.8 billion people—with it.

In the past few decades, scientists have been frantically trying to figure out how far our life-support system can be pushed before everything we know and love starts to break down. Ten years ago, this research allowed us to estimate, for the first time, where to build the safety barriers to protect us from falling off the cliff. We called these the planetary boundaries. They define, scientifically, a safe operating space on Earth for us humans to have a good chance of a thriving future. After all, every child’s birthright is a stable, resilient planet. Since the dawn of civilization, 10,000 years ago, this has been our common heritage. If Earth remains within the planetary boundaries, we have a better chance of a long stable future. Outside the boundaries, anything could happen. We have written this book to tell this story.

Time is running out. The decade we have just stepped into—the roaring 2020s—will be decisive for humanity. It is the moment to catalyze the most remarkable transition in history to become effective stewards of Earth. The scale of the challenge is immense. In the same way that the 1960s had the moonshot, the 2020s has the Earthshot. The goal of the Earthshot is nothing less than stabilizing our planet’s life-support system. But compared with landing men on the moon, the stakes are far higher.

If we can achieve this goal, and it is a big if, then perhaps it will mark a profound transition for Earth, in which one species gains the power to deliberately and positively influence a planet’s habitability. We are far from that point right now. In fact, at the moment, we are acting as if our aim is to be one of the select few species that have alone managed to unwittingly disrupt the habitability of a planet. This is occurring despite our vast knowledge, our global political systems, and our advancing technology.

We have already struggled to contain a global pandemic, struggled to slow extinction rates, struggled to halt deforestation, and struggled to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. We have cut a gaping hole in the ozone layer, and we watch mutely as corals bleach, ice sheets melt, and fires blaze. Our power is outstripping our wisdom.

But things are changing. In the past decade, we have seen an explosion of evidence that a global population of 7.8 billion people, growing to 10 billion, can live a good life within Earth’s boundaries. And this can be achieved by 2050. The big drama is that, in order to succeed, we need to do much of the work by 2030 or thereabouts, which means we need to start now.

The Earthshot comes at a time of deep dysfunction in society. Imagine if NASA found an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth. Estimated time of arrival: one decade. What would we do? Would we use our superpower—cooperation—to come together and combine our economic resources and our best minds to solve the problem? Or would we do nothing? Would we hope that we get lucky and the rock grazes past?

Actually, we do not need to imagine. A pandemic swept across the world in 2020, in the midst of writing this book. COVID-19 was no black swan—a rare and large-scale, unforeseeable event. For at least a decade, scientists had been sending unequivocal warning signals specifically about a coronavirus. Health experts estimated the cost of an adequate early warning system amounted to one or two dollars per person on Earth every year. But governments failed to heed the warnings and within months of the outbreak more than half the population on Earth was in lockdown. We are ignoring knowledge of existential risks.

Pandemics, climate change, and mass extinctions of life on Earth are part of the same pattern and they are tightly connected. We are now living in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. This new age is characterized by speed, scale, surprise, and connectivity. Risks are amplified because we separate our economy from nature and humanity. The pandemic recovery is a transformative moment to rethink our relationships with the economy, with each other, and with our planet.

Time is precious, so in this book we want to concentrate on solutions. We have identified six system transformations—energy, food and land, inequality and poverty, cities, population and health, and technology—that are necessary to stabilize Earth and ensure economic security and prosperity. Perhaps surprisingly, we are optimistic that these system changes are within reach. This is, in part, because four positive forces are aligning:

Social movements. The speed, scale, and impact of campaigns such as FridaysForFuture are astounding. They have changed the conversation and upped the urgency. These movements are calling out and exposing political and industrial failures. Their impact cannot be underestimated. And they are not alone. Business leaders, investors, and legal experts are throwing their weight behind the mission.

Political momentum. The global economy is driven by three economic powerhouses: Europe, China, and the United States. In 2019, Europe committed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In September 2020, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced his country would be carbon neutral by 2060 at the latest. Then President Joe Biden came to power and committed to putting the United States on course to reach net zero by 2050 (and, incredibly, to run on 100 percent clean electricity by 2035). Like the G7 and G20 groups of countries, this creates a new G3 for climate, with the three largest economic regions driving a remarkable and necessary economic transformation, which will impact the whole world.

Economic momentum. The fossil fuel era is over. Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in the history of humanity.

Technological innovation. The fourth industrial revolution, from 5G to artificial intelligence and biotechnology, is on the cusp of disrupting all economic sectors. This can and must be targeted at supporting the economic transformation.

Combined, these forces are pushing us inexorably toward a positive tipping point. Planetary awareness is finally emerging. Of course, we acknowledge that this is just the start. Political leaders must commit to even more ambitious goals.

The pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to fix our broken economic system and reevaluate what really matters. The fall in air pollution during the lockdown months gave a glimpse of a future without dense smog hanging over cities. The crisis often brought out the best of humanity. Let’s hang on to that. But let’s also ask, what do we really value? What kind of societies do we want to live in? Can we build an economy that does not fall to pieces at the slightest sign of uncertainty? And can we build an economic recovery over the next decade that simultaneously supports a resilient planet? We need to jettison old-school economic thinking, go back to the classroom, and learn a new set of three Rs: resilience, regeneration, and recirculation. Economic growth at the expense of Earth’s biosphere—our living planet—must be redirected toward growth based on knowledge, information, digitalization, services, and sharing. This is the Anthropocene school of economic thinking.

What if we fail to make enough progress in the next decade? Do we fall off the cliff? Even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 50 percent this decade, the risk of skidding over the cliff remains high. But we would not fall over the edge in 2031; the danger is that we trigger self-warming and make the drift unstoppable. Here are some of the risks we face: irreversibly losing tropical coral reefs; pushing the Amazon rain forest across a tipping point; setting Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets on an irreversible melting course; and sparking unstoppable methane release from thawing permafrost. There will never be a point where all is lost. Many of our colleagues rightly say that if we cross tipping points we may still be able to control the rate of change by acting decisively, but the longer we wait, the more turbulence and turmoil we leave to our children and grandchildren for generations to come. And if there is still a chance to pull us back from the brink, should we not put all our efforts into that action?

This book tells the story of humanity’s journey toward planetary stewardship in three acts. Ultimately, it is about changing course, about responsibility and opportunity, about setting a new standard for our accomplishments.

Act I is the story of Earth’s life-support system: the cascading water, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles; the crashing continents; the rolling waves and receding ice sheets; and the twists, turns, and surprises of evolution. Here, we will explain that Earth has a hair trigger: a small change could set off a cascade of tipping points that could send global temperatures soaring. Act I will also tell the story of how one species, through its own revolutions—agricultural, scientific, and industrial—reshaped our planet. Now, this one species is hammering Earth’s hair trigger from all sides.

Act II is the story of the remarkable scientific achievements of the past three decades. Scientists have been racing to assemble an unparalleled understanding of the health of the planet. This has led to the undisputed conclusion that the rate of change of Earth’s life-support system is accelerating. The only stable state that we know can support civilization—the Holocene—is disappearing in the rearview mirror. This is a planetary emergency.

Act III is the story of the Earthshot—our most important mission. Humanity simply must become good stewards of Earth or we will not be around for very long. Our decisions in the next ten years will influence the next ten millennia.

When assembled, the fragmented knowledge about our planet and our place in it amounts to nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of Earth and our responsibility in relation to it. How will this translate to a cultural, economic, and political paradigm shift? The way we operate as societies must fundamentally transform—this is revolution not evolution. Belief in infinite growth based on material extraction and expulsion is not compatible with a long-term civilization here on Earth. But there is another way. Our most important insight in this book is its simplest: it is past time we became planetary stewards. Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet is about that transformation. It is not about where we are coming from. It is about where we are going.

It took 50 years for us—and let’s be clear, primarily the us here refers to the wealthiest people in the wealthiest countries—to push Earth beyond a 10,000-year period of extraordinary stability. The decisions we make today—literally today—this decade and in the next 50 years, will influence the stability of our planet for the coming 10,000 years.

Three things unite us: our common human identity within a truly global civilization, our common home—this planet we call Earth—and our common future. If we can turn our ship within a decade, if we become effective planetary stewards, then maybe, just maybe, we will have earned our name Homo sapiens—wise man.

This leaves us with a final question. What kind of world do we want to leave to our children? Let’s leave our children nothing. No greenhouse gas emissions. No biodiversity loss. No poverty. This is not a manifesto, nor is it an aspiration. It is one of two choices that we—humanity—have on the table right now.

January 2021

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ACT

I

ACT I | Contents

Three revolutions that shaped our planet

A Scottish janitor and a Serbian mathematician discover Earth’s hair trigger

A wise man arrives

The Goldilocks epoch

g ACT I g CONTENTS

Three revolutions that shaped our planet

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

Carl Sagan

PALE BLUE DOT: A VISION OF THE HUMAN FUTURE IN SPACE, 1994

In 1990, NASA snapped a photograph, a kind of family portrait, from the Voyager I spacecraft, which had just reached the edge of our solar system. For the final time on the mission, the camera pointed back to Earth, 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away. This photograph became known as the Pale Blue Dot. Since the image was taken, 30 years ago, scientists have identified more than 4,000 exoplanets (planets orbiting