“Who will stand with me in the midst of the Fullness thereof, And put a hand of care on the boundaries of the fullness thereof?The Earth is the Lord’s, and the boundaries thereof.”
THE VERSE ABOVE is from a song that I composed years ago and sang during an Earth Day celebration entitled “The Fullness Thereof.” (Click here to listen to a recording of my song). As you recognize, the lyrics are from Psalm 24:
“The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein; for He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.”
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IN THIS POST I AM GOINGTO DIVE INTO the vast and complex topic of planetary boundaries within the context of very current conversations and articles about Climate Change—aka Climate Warming, Climate Crisis, and Climate Emergency. Many of the conversations center around survival of our species. I would like to have a conversation around honoring and respecting the ecological boundaries of our Earth Mother—in a word, returning to true stewardship of our planet. The wording in Genesis is “replenish the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28), and later on, “dress and keep the Garden of Eden.” (Genesis 2:15).
Please bear in mind as you read this article that what it contains is not intended to arouse fear in the heart but rather shed some light on the issue. We might even consider it in the context of Joseph Campbell’s mythical story of “The Hero’s Journey” involving a search for the Elixir of Immortality and the nemesis one faces along one’s path, ideally overcoming and conquering it. Our planet’s climate—in which we breathe and endeavor to “be fruitful and multiply” and flourish as a species—is seen as our nemesis in human consciousness. We were instructed by the Creator on Day 6 in Genesis to “subdue” the earth. Apparently the planet was a vast wilderness, not to mention still in the wake of violent evolutionary upheavals with volcanic eruptions and floods still in progress as oceans and seas settled into their appointed places. “Subdue” implies a struggle or a battle. The actual nemesis, however, is not the climate but self-serving human beings. It is said that we are our own worst enemy. We are our own nemesis.
Well, we’ve obeyed the command to “multiply” our species, grossly over doing it actually, but we have been very lazy and neglectful in obeying our orders to “replenish the earth.” Quite the contrary, we have abused her and raped her of its natural resources—her very flesh, blood and bones—giving little if any consideration as to how we might go about repairing the damage we’ve done to Her and replenishing Her soil—one of the “nine boundaries” Bill Isaacs references in his article “Healing the Fever,” which I featured in my previous post. We would do well to look out at the damage we’ve done to our Earth Mother . . . and to her atmosphere and our climate . . . and pray: “Father forgive us, for we knew well what we’ve been doing but didn’t care enough to give thought to the consequences of our actions.” Seeing and experiencing those consequences today, we can only forgive ourselves . . . and stop doing the same things we’ve been doing that have brought us to this impasse.
We have heretofore looked to Mother Nature for our sustenance, to take care of us, forgetting that we have had the responsibility from the Beginning to take care of Mother Nature. To “dress and keep” her. But Mother Nature has her boundaries—with signs and symptoms that say: “Thus far and no further. Beyond this point you’re on your own.”
GAIA’S BOUNDARIES
What exactly are her boundaries? The pie-shaped graphic below provided by Johan Rockstrom shows the nine boundaries and where we are in proximity to them. The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.
In 2009, former centre director Johan Rockström led a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists to identify the nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system.
The scientists proposed quantitative planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. Since then the planetary boundaries framework has generated enormous interest within science, policy, and practice.
In January 2022, 14 scientists concluded in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology that humanity has exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants and other “novel entities” including plastics.
NINE PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
OUT OF CONTROL
For the first time, an international team of researchers has assessed the impact on the stability of the Earth system of the cocktail of synthetic chemicals and other “novel entities” flooding the environment.
“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” says co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Plastic production alone increased 79% between 2000 and 2015 the team reports.
The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity. Patricia Villarubia-Gómez
In April 2022, a reassessment of the planetary boundary for freshwater indicates that it has now been transgressed. This conclusion is due to the inclusion of “green water” – the water available to plants – into the boundary assessment for the first time.
The assessment, published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, is based on evidence of widespread changes in soil moisture relative to mid-Holocene and pre-industrial conditions and green-water driven destabilization of ecological, atmospheric, and biogeochemical processes.
SUMMARY
Several safe boundaries of critical Earth system processes have already been crossed due to human perturbations; not accounting for their interactions may further narrow the safe operating space for humanity. Using expert knowledge elicitation, we explored interactions among seven variables representing Earth system processes relevant to food production, identifying many interactions little explored in Earth system literature.
We found that green water and land system change affect other Earth system processes strongly, while land, freshwater and ocean components of biosphere integrity are the most impacted by other Earth system processes, most notably blue water and biogeochemical flows. We also mapped a complex network of mechanisms mediating these interactions and created a future research prioritization scheme based on interaction strengths and existing knowledge gaps.
Our study improves the understanding of Earth system interactions, with sustainability implications including improved Earth system modeling and more explicit biophysical limits for future food production.
FILLS IMPORTANT GAP IN RESEARCH
There are an estimated 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market. These include plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, chemicals in consumer products, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals. These are all wholly novel entities, created by human activities with largely unknown effects on the Earth system. Significant volumes of these novel entities enter the environment each year.
“The rate at which these pollutants are appearing in the environment far exceeds the capacity of governments to assess global and regional risks, let alone control any potential problems,” says co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg. The research fills an important gap in analysis of “planetary boundaries.”
In 2009, an international team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that demarcate the remarkably stable state Earth has remained within for 10,000 years – since the dawn of civilization. These boundaries include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The researchers quantified the boundaries that influence Earth’s stability, and concluded in 2015 that four boundaries have been breached. But the boundary for novel entities was one of two boundaries that remained unquantified. This new research takes this a step further.
OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE
The researchers say there are many ways that chemicals and plastics have negative effects on planetary health, from mining, fracking and drilling to extract raw materials to production and waste management.
“Some of these pollutants can be found globally, from the Arctic to Antarctica, and can be extremely persistent. We have overwhelming evidence of negative impacts on Earth systems, including biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles,” says Carney Almroth.
Global production and consumption of novel entities is set to continue to grow. The total mass of plastics on the planet is now over twice the mass of all living mammals, and roughly 80% of all plastics ever produced remain in the environment.
Plastics contain over 10,000 other chemicals, so their environmental degradation creates new combinations of materials – and unprecedented environmental hazards. Production of plastics is set to increase and predictions indicate that the release of plastic pollution to the environment will rise too, despite huge efforts in many countries to reduce waste.
SHIFTING TO A CIRCULAR ECONOMY
The researchers conclude that current increasing trends of chemical production and release put the health of the Earth system at risk. The authors call for actions to reduce the production and release of pollutants.
“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” says Carney Almroth. “And shifting to a circular economy is really important. That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system”, adds Sarah Cornell from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Credit: Graphic design by Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Persson et al 2022 and Steffen et al 2015.
WHAT CAN I DO?
So, there you have it from reliable scientific sources. What we do with this information is up to us individually and collectively. The most obvious thing we can do as individuals is to stop buying detergents and beverages in plastic containers, and use cloth bags at the super market to carry our groceries home. There are efforts being put forth by individuals who have designed methods for cleaning up the waters of plastics and other trash. I commend them on their efforts. If we each one take as much responsibility by refusing to buy plastic items, that would take a huge load off of the environment.
The most important thing we can all do is nurture a deep sense of care for our Earth Mother and a connection with her by visiting her often in the sanctuaries of her woods and riversides, beaches and gardens. Take some of her soil in your hands and connect with it deeply. Give her seeds and water to grow her bounty. A friend and colleague recently wrote:
What matters is that in the bedrock of our psyche we already KNOW that we are living in the House of Nature, which is the House of God. We already KNOW we’re supposed to be good and wise stewards of the living earth, and of the balance of nature.The only question to be answered — by each human being, but first by those of us privileged to live in the first world — “Do I care enough to change?”
That’s big for most of us, I imagine. It is for me in my “golden years.” To the youth of this now generation, my counsel is taken from the book of Ecclesiastes Ch 12:
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”
We may remember that our own house of being is the temple of God, and to do unto our planetary House as we would have our planetary House do unto us. We can be kind to it and thankful to the Father for the care and generosity, the grace and forgiveness, the nurturing and constancy of our Earth Mother.
READY FOR SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE . . . OUTSIDE THE BOX OF THE MEDIA’S NARRATIVE ?!
Humans’ view of the earth is through the consciousness of a species in danger of extinction. The above reports are all about us and our surviving amid devastating fire, floods and earthquakes as atmospheric temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit as we push the planet’s natural boundaries beyond their life-supporting thresholds. The rest of the storyis all about the planet, which appears to be thriving. As we strive to avert a calamitous climate crisis, Gaia undergoes a facelift and a renewal of her luscious green wardrobe. Enjoy the good news in this four-minute video.
The Earth is thriving, greening and flourishing . . . DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Gaia is moving on and leaving us to our own devices. Let’s make an about face and assist her with her new wardrobe. I’m certain she would welcome our help . . . and our return to true stewardship.
I welcome your comments. Feel free to share this post with friends and family. Until my next post,
Healing Tones 