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I’m at the point in life where I’m not really all about saving the planet anymore.  Oh sure, I recycle, carpool when I can all of those little personal things one can do to be more “earth friendly” but until we reform our current ‘limitless growth paradigm’, we are well and truly screwed. Hence the reason why my Eco-consciousness is changing from saving the planet to hoping that the shit doesn’t hit the fan during my lifetime.

“At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.”

Well that is all rainbows and unicorns, no? It gets worse…

“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption — are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.

“The researchers focused on nine separate planetary boundaries first identified by scientists in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set theoretical limits on changes to the environment, and include ozone depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms.”

Well, four down five to go. We can do this, right?

[Source:Washington Post]

[Source:Science]