Open Future New Zealand

Planetary Health and Your Children's Future

Some Things to Think About and Research

Acceptance that the World has it's Own History

[Edit: October, 2023] For me it's been difficult to accept that homo sapiens is an animal, and our genes are very good at helping us as individuals and in small groups to be healthy and survive. We work hard. For those who are close to "us" like friends and family, people we meet in public, we will go out or our way to be helpful. But we also walk by someone sleeping in the street, or looking for food or money from strangers, outside a supermarket. We can build stuff. but to do so we need resources that we take from nature, and humanity has taken so much from nature, that there are problems, in the supply of clean water and air, in maintaining agricultural soils, in finding ways to dispose of our waste, and in maintaining a healthy ocean. Climate change is a tiny blip of a problem compared with what might come our way. We've known for 30 years that we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions yet we can't STOP. We can't because we are addicted to high energy use. That's the source of the wealth and prosperity in modern society.

This is the problem of Overshoot, simply, on a small planet too many people have planned to be successful, by taking land and habitat from "the wild" or from other species, and converting it to human use. We are animals, that's what all animals do. They do their best to live well. But science tells us humanity is using resources at about 175% of planet Earth's capacity'. More than 100%, means we are destroying the planet. Making it worse, in the USA, they use resources three times faster than that. As a group the other "developed nations" use resources at twice that rate. New Zealand is part of the problem. We live in a phantasy, expecting that "growth of the economy can continue". We have to imagine that we could live successfully and well, with a living standard like that to the 1950's. Is that doable? Sadly, I doubt it, I think we will have a catastrophe first. [/Edit]

Carbon Storage

If the main greenhouse gas is CO² and we need to reduce the amount of it in the atmosphere, there are two methods: reduce the amount we are putting into the atmosphere, or finding a way to take CO² out of the atmosphere and store it somewhere.  We are trying to do both. 

The destruction of forests continues world-wide.  We have also drained many of the worlds wetlands, and opened the soil by ploughing, allowing much of the carbon stored in soil to oxidize, and allowing soil to blow away or wash away.  Our land management has been poor. 

There is a positive side to all this destruction.  Forests can be restored.  Soils can be rebuilt.  Land turned to desert can be restored by regenerative practices.  The science on this, like the science in nutrition is contested.  There is a great deal to learn yet, I expect, but the prospect of restoring the worlds soils and using plant growth to take carbon out of the atmosphere is something I hope for.

Living in Phantasy; Australian Coal Exports and Bush-Fires

Badly understood economics assumed that rising gross domestic product is a good measure economic success.  Rising GDP allows governments to raise more money from taxation, and governments everywhere have fallen into the trap of using this single measure of "progress" to measure their achievement since WWII. 

Governments have looked to mining as a way to boost GDP.  Subsidies are paid for mining and oil exploration.  Subsidies or favourable trading conditions have been used to encourage production.  This process needs to be reversed; quickly.  Governments have been very reluctant to do that. 

Australia is a country where the negative effects of climate change are clearly seen.  Droughts, rivers running dry, desertification, wildfires, severe floods, they have all the problems.  Yet the Australian government is actively encouraging coal mining and coal exporting. 

We need to reduce the use of fossil fuels by 10% each year, and nowhere is that prospect being seriously considered.  The method has to be the imposition of carbon taxes, and the application of those taxes has to be world-wide. 

Is it possible to reduce your own use of fossil fuels by 10% a year, and to eliminate your use of fossil fuels by 2035?  Perhaps, but only if you live in a community that encourages that process.  [Edit: 2023] In 2020, when I first wrote those words, for me the answer was obvious.  That on my own I would struggle, but as a community we could do it, it was simply a matter of having the political will to act now.  Today, I doubt that this option is real. 

There are two reasons for my pessimistic view;
1) That it's not possible to electrify all industry, particularly mining and shipping.
2) That the massive scale of mining required to supply minerals demanded to supply the "green energy" at a rate sufficient to avoid a climate disaster, is impossible to achieve.  [/Edit]

2015 to 2020 have been the warmest five years in history.  The climatic effect is to increase heavy rainfall and drought.  Warming oceans increase the moisture in the storms and increases the speed of the winds.  Storms are both more frequent and more severe. 

Tipping Points

In "The Bridge at the Edge of the World", distinguished environmentalist, James Gustave Speth writes; "The evidence is in.  Current approaches (conservation) have been tried for almost four decades.  Look at what has happened.  ...  We are losing the planet.  It's important to ask why?"

In the 1962, "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, was published.  Carson, documented the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides.  Of the thousands of new chemicals now produced, only a few hundred have been tested for toxicity.  The Canadian government has a list of eighty-eight chemicals known to be harmful to humans.  The average Canadian has forty-four of those chemicals in his/her system. 

From both the European Union and the USA, chemicals known to be harmful to people and/or the environment, and banned from sale in the country of origin, are freely exported. 

The trend of some 3,000 wild species is a consistent decline in population, some losing about 10% per year.  Freshwater and marine species are particularly badly affected. 

The land and the oceans have been converted from a natural wild state, to a homogenised single purpose, to provide something that people want.  In 1994 we were warned that the Earth is finite.  It's ability to absorb human waste and toxic effluent is finite.  Earths ability to provide minerals is finite.  The ability to provide consumer goods for humans is finite.  The 6^th major extinction of life on Earth is happening now. 

In 2009 the Stockholm Resource Centre, proposed nine planetary boundaries that set the limits to our ability to exploit the Earth's resources.  Two of those are already at a high risk level: nitrogen and phosphorous pollution of waterways (Mostly from farming.) and, biodiversity loss and extinction of species.  In addition: the world's climate is becoming unstable, and the conversion of land from a wilderness to some economic purpose or to enable and expanding population to live a better life, cannot be sustained.

Once the tipping point is reached there may be a cascade of self-reinforcing and unwelcome events.  We need to avoid the uncertainty of such a development.