Thursday, September 02, 2010

"The most exciting decade in the history of the planet"

"The climate challenge is the easy one [...]. Incremental change is not an option."
Rockström was lead author on last year’s Nature paper on planetary boundaries and this video is an excellent 20 minute summary of the shift from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, of the multiple "hockey stick" graphs we face, of the non-linear behaviour of earth systems and of the nine planetary boundaries we've transgressed or are in danger of passing soon.

We are in an ecologically novel situation. Never before have we been so close to self-destruction on such a scale.

5 comments:

phil_style said...

Excellent video. Thanks for posting it.

byron smith said...

Thanks - glad you enjoyed it and I see you're blogging on it yourself.

byron smith said...

Full transcript here.

Matheson said...

This presentation has probably made the biggest impression on me of all the things I have been introduced to via your blog, Byron. Should be compulsory viewing. (I was just thinking about it, and decided to watch it again...)

byron smith said...

Yep - it's a great summary which moves through a lot of material quite quickly and he's equally informative and entertaining.

Which elements had the biggest impact for you? And were they old ideas you encountered in new ways or some new thoughts?