Chapter 6 Reading

Chapter 6 Reading

                                                               Planetary Boundaries


 Section 1
     The growth of many countries often interrupts the complete solution to sustainable development within societies all over the world. Some of the major challenges that the environment faces are climate change, ocean acidification, and species extinction. These extend globally and effect major aspects of life, to include the prevention of any country having completely reached sustainable development, regardless of the efforts being put forth. This is caused by the environmental limitation that the human race is exhausting more and more every day, "humanity is exceeding the planetary boundaries in several critical areas" (The Age of Sustainable Development). Thomas Robert Malthus wrote an essay that portrayed the warnings on the negative aspects of unbalanced population to natural resource supply ratio. His views on it, however, favored the possibilities of the natural reversal of economic developmental gains by population pressure. His theory was later proved incorrect as society created new technological advances that expanded the capability of larger food growth for the means of providing for the population on a global scale. Though we are having population growth containment issues in the sense of an increase of natural resource abundance loss, another four billion is estimated to be added to the populating in the coming century, along with much more environmental stress. The nine areas of planetary boundaries are climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, pollution, overuse of freshwater resources, land usage, biodiversity, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution, all of which have the most effect on Earth's sustainability overall.
Section 2
     Although the human race is borderline overflowing past our planetary boundaries, the environmental pressure has higher chances of increasing rather than decreasing in the near and lasting future. This is calculated based on the increase of both GDP and worldwide population. The most difficult factors to deal with is the improvement of poor countries while maintaining a fixed goal on continued growth globally and Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem. Although they seem like completely opposite goal sets, this section elaborates on the similarities the two sustainability goals that are awaiting accomplishment. The remaining issue with the desire of undeveloped countries closing the income gap between them and the "rich world" would be the definite push past planetary boundaries, therefore causing great damage to the nine areas of planetary boundaries listed previously.
Section 3
     Growth reconcilement of planetary boundaries is an urgent matter overall, however, the most important of them is the usage of energy. World economy has developed on the basis of using fossil fuels as energy, such as steam engines, combustion engines, and gas turbines. The first achievable sustainable progress within the economy was achieved by using James Watt's improved steam engine in 1776. Since any type of work requires energy, it is hard to find the reduction of damage caused by the usage of harmful energy producing factors. The most foreseeable solution to this problem would be the deep decarbonization of the energy systems we use today, which would require less usage of carbon dioxide emissions. This will consist of three main pillars, which are energy efficiency, low-carbon electricity, and storage technologies.
Section 4
     All planetary boundaries are closely related to agriculture. Many human-made products have been used since Malthus first wrote his essay predicting future planetary boundaries, such as nitrogen fertilizers and geometric growth of food production. Although Malthus seemed to neglect the possibilities of technological advances, he was right to worry for the planet, as when he wrote his essay, the world population was only 1/8 of what it is today. The correction of farm systems would prevent any  more irreversible damage that could be done to the environment on a global scale.
Section 5
     The possible achievement of sustainable development depends solely on the dynamics within the world's population within the near and far future. Although rich countries tend to have lower fertility rates, the high fertility rates within undeveloped countries challenges the population growth of the planet equally as much as those with average fertility rates. However, those often stuck in demographic traps tend to be the poor countries because of the household's economic standings.
Section 6
     Environmentalists today are highly alarmed because of the high risk of overpassing our planetary boundaries that conclude how economical growth will have negative growth rates rather than a decrease in both usage of natural resources and exhaustion of man-made resources made to help sustainability improve globally.