"Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system's stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this." — co-author Sander van der Leeuw.
A team of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists published a warning that human activity has already pushed three of Earth’s nine biophysical boundaries to beyond the planet’s ability to self-regulate.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers attempt to set “acceptable” upper limits on man’s influence on such environmental conditions as climate, biodiversity, stratospheric ozone and chemical cycles like that of nitrogen.
They suggest that for some of those conditions, like the use of nitrogen in fertilizers and loading of atmospheric carbon dioxide, humankind may have already stepped outside the safety zone.
It’s feared we may have to backpedal quickly to avoid catastrophe. Human activities — largely due to growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture — have become so pervasive that they may trigger irreversible and abrupt environmental change by damaging the regulatory capacity of the planet, the group warned.