The Trump administration recently directed NASA to draw up plans to terminate the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO) missions. The move is consistent with a general trend in this administration to defund science efforts related to climate change. Since the OCO missions aim to understand spatial and temporal patterns in carbon (CO2) exchange between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere – and CO2 is a greenhouse gas – the OCO missions are in the administration’s crosshairs.
Inverse modeling is a mathematician’s dream. For the inversion, a simulation model of the atmosphere is constructed by partitioning the atmosphere into a massive number of cells. The circulation of the atmosphere is then simulated, and in each time step, energy and mass (including CO2) are passed among the cells. The model starts out with rough estimates of these fluxes, then uses the observations of actual CO2 concentrations observed by the OCO sensor to gradually refine the initial (“prior”) flux estimates.
Of particular interest are regional estimates for 1) fossil fuel emissions, and 2) carbon uptake by the biosphere. The fossil fuel emissions estimates are especially relevant to verifying the Paris Accord reporting by each nation of their carbon emissions. The estimates of biosphere carbon sinks can help with land use management to maximize carbon uptake, hence offsetting fossil fuel emissions. Inversion-based flux estimates can also be used to validate the Earth system models that project long-term impacts of the technosphere and the biosphere on the global carbon cycle.
An additional capability of the OCO spectrometer is to monitor fluorescence emissions associated with photosynthesis. These data are inputs to simulation models of global plant productivity (gross primary production), and have helped establish that global plant productivity is increasing.
We are living in the Anthropocene era: humanity (the technosphere) is clearly impacting all aspects of the Earth system, including the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and cryosphere. We have the capability and a responsibility to monitor and manage those human impacts.
Deliberately blinding scientists, prognosticators, and politicians to global scale carbon dynamics does not bode well for the human prospect on Earth.
Sea otter consuming sea urchins. Photo Credit: matt “smooth” thooth knoth through Flickr via Creative Commons License.
Introduction
The Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS) holds that successive generations of natural resource managers tend to have a different image of what is natural.
The concept was originally proposed by a fisheries biologist (Daniel Pauly) who observed it in the context of declines in commercially harvested fish populations.
First though, I note that one might ask if the term “baseline” even has meaning anymore.
We know that virtually all natural processes are now altered by human actions to some degree. Also, that anthropogenic climate change and the 6th Extinction will play out over centuries, and will be largely irreversible. Everything measurable about ecosystems is shifting, hence in some sense there are no baselines. Which makes it a good time to hone in on how best to use the SBS concept.
Case Studies of SBS in Relation to Ecological Processes
1. Effects of Predation in Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems
“Trophic cascade” effects of losing the upper trophic level in an ecosystem are common in terrestrial, as well as marine, ecosystems but are not always obvious.
A land manager coming anew to Yellowstone National Park in the 1980s ̶ after extirpation of wolves ̶ and encountering overgrazing along streams, might not appreciate the regulatory role of wolves on the elk population (a major herbivorous species). The baseline for the process of predation on elk had shifted, but the land manager might miss it.
A survey of kelp abundance along the coast of the Pacific Northwest US in the late 20th century would have found little kelp. This form of marine plant is of great ecological importance because it provides food and protection for young fish. A major control on kelp abundance is the presence of sea urchins. They prowl the ocean floor and consume dead and live kelp plants. A major control on sea urchin abundance is predation by sea otters. The otters are able to overcome sea urchin spines and feast on their internal organs. Unfortunately, sea otter fur is quite valuable and the otters in the Pacific Northwest were hunted to local extinction by around 1910. As a consequence, urchin barrens ̶ where little kelp is found ̶ have formed from an overpopulation of sea urchins, with corresponding effects on fish populations. As kelp faded from the near shore environment in the 20th Century, wildlife managers may have begun to think kelp was naturally found only at low density in these waters (a case of SBS). Restoration of sea otter predation on sea urchins, and better management of other sea urchin predators, is helping recreate more vibrant, kelp-friendly, marine ecosystems.
2. Effects of Declining Invertebrate Diversity on Decomposition
Ecosystem ecologists commonly study rates of leaf litter decomposition by enclosing fallen leaves in a mesh bag and leaving the bag on the soil for an extended period. The rate of change in dry weight is then a metric for decomposition rate. One might assume that the results of a litter bag study reflect natural or baseline conditions. But such is no longer the case.
A critical factor that is moving this bar is the “insect apocalypse”. The process of decomposition (i.e. decay of foliage, roots, wood) is driven in part by invertebrates such as insects and slugs, and the process is slowed by a decline in invertebrate biodiversity.
Driving forces in the decline of insect biodiversity include land use change, pesticides, and effects of climate change. Desynchronization in the interactions among insect species, and between insect species and local plants, can significantly impact local populations.
Slowed decomposition means slower release of nutrients and possibly slower plant growth. Thus, by altering state variables such as the diversity of invertebrates, we are altering critical process rates, possibly on a massive scale. But detecting and tracking these rate changes is difficult.
3. Effects of Deforestation on Regional Evapotranspiration
Large areas of the Amazon Basin have been deforested in recent decades. A key process altered by deforestation is the transpiration of water, i.e. loss of water through leaf stomata. Where canopy leaf area is decreased, transpiration decreases and because around 50% of precipitation in a rain forest is recycled from previous rain events (by way of transpiration), the loss of forest leaf area associated with regional deforestation tends to induce a decline in regional precipitation. Decreased precipitation in the Amazon Basin is projected to impact native vegetation and agriculture.
The principle of “stationarity” in climate research is similar to that of “baseline” in ecological studies. Climatologists aspire to describe the statistical properties (e.g. mean and variability) for properties like precipitation and temperature for a given region. The climate is designated as stationary if these statistical properties are stable over time. If those properties are drifting, as in the case of fossil-fuel-emissions-driven climate change, the climate is said to be non-stationarity and hence less predictable.
If ecological baselines are shifting and the climate is losing stationarity, natural resource managers require strong monitoring programs to track changes, and new adaptive strategies to avoid ecosystem degradation.
Conservation Strategies in the Face of SBS
A growing awareness of shifting ecological process rates, and the possible consequences, has helped inspire several conservation strategies.
Rewilding
The original “rewilding” concept emphasized “cores, corridors, and carnivores”. Advocates pointed to degraded ecosystems and attributed the problem to the decline or absence of specific processes, e.g. predation. The full range of trophic interactions was seen as fundamental to shaping the structure and function of ecosystems and landscapes. Human interventions such as hunting were not considered a substitute for natural processes such as predation.
The reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone region is an iconic case of rewilding. But the theory has also been applied in the case of background processes like decomposition. Here, transfer of invertebrates and microbes from undisturbed to disturbed sites helps restore decomposition rates.
Large areas of land and ocean provide services to humans – notably food, wood, water filtration, and recreation. These working ecosystems are clearly no longer natural, yet they contribute to biosphere metabolism and are worth managing as such.
NBS is a conservation framework with an “overarching goal to address global societal challenges”. It tends to be applied at large scales and require significant human management intervention. On the human side, delivering ecosystem services and comprehensive stakeholder involvement are core objectives. On the ecological side, the emphasis is on management of natural processes. Restoration and management of mangrove forests is a good example because it requires intensive site manipulation that ultimately provides services like carbon sequestration and coastline protection from storm surges.
Both private sector and public sector efforts at sustainability are increasingly framed in terms of a nature – centered perspective.
Conclusions
Anthropogenically-driven non-stationarity in the physical environment, and shifting baselines for both state variables and ecological processes, are increasingly relevant to natural resources management. Conservation frameworks like rewilding and Nature-Based Solutions provide adaptive strategies for managing under these contemporary conditions. Governmental support for monitoring and restoration at multiple scales is required.
Stylized image of Earth and its AI-infused technosphere. Image Credit: MS CoPilot.
Introduction
The technosphere is increasingly impacting core features of the Earth system, notably the climate and the biosphere.
Accordingly, there is wide recognition that we humans (with the usual caveats about the meaning of “we” here) need to rein in (tame) the technosphere.
However, this project does not amount to just putting constraints on existing technology; new technologies designed to harvest, synthesize, and act on vast arrays of digital data are also needed.
The idea of managing the technosphere, or indeed the Earth system, has an obvious air of hubris. But the technosphere is unquestionably having global scale deleterious impacts on the Earth system, and the human responsibility to do something about it is clear.
Notable recent changes in the technosphere that will help with global management include the arrival of well-functioning Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like large language models (LLMs) and neural network-based machine learning algorithms. Along with the information plenitude referred to in my title ̶ a product of the recent trend to digitize all information, be it in the form of text, images, audio, or video ̶ some hope of grasping global scale dynamics is emerging.
AI provides a fundamentally new way of thinking – beyond historical faith-based and reason-based approaches. The human thinking apparatus – our brain – simply does not have the capacity to assimilate and synthesize information at the scale with which it is being produced. Fortunately, AI algorithms in combination with massive computing power and vast observational data sets can often do the job. One great strength is that they can search the solution space of a problem more thoroughly that the unassisted human mind.
AI might also be considered analogous to a new source of energy. Just as fossil fuels freed up our bodies to do more interesting and less labor-intensive activities, AI is freeing up our minds to do more fulfilling and less routine activities, including attending to sustainability at local to global scales.
The Role of AI in Earth System Management
Managing a socio-ecological system (such as the Earth system) requires monitoring the system, developing a model to assimilate observations of the system and help with understanding and planning, and organizing a deliberative body to make decisions.
The relevant models could be 1) process-based Earth system simulation models, e.g. that include a representation of the global climate as well as social subsystems, 2) mechanism-free data driven models based on AI-assisted pattern analysis, or 3) combinations of these two approaches.
As far as deliberative bodies, the world is dangerously short of global governance infrastructure. United Nations sponsored efforts such as the Paris Climate Accords are only a shadow of what is needed. AI may be helpful in generating and summarizing relevant data, though of course the bigger challenge is with human capacity and willingness to change. Ultimately, superintelligent AI might have features that make it better at devising optimal choices about global governance than (mere) humans could come up with.
Use Cases That Already Effectively Combine AI with Massive Data Sets
1) AI management of regional electricity grids. Management of regional electricity grids has become much more complicated as they transition from traditional base-load power plants to supply by renewable sources. The intermittency of wind and solar, as well as variation in the scale of the inputs (roof-top to utility-scale operations in the case of solar energy), are particularly challenging. Smart grids must be capable of sending and receiving power from a multitude of individual customers, and maintaining dynamic pricing to balance power consumption during periods of high and low demand.
Fortunately, machine learning is effective at assimilating a blizzard of power system data, and in making automated decisions that link energy supply and demand.
2. Use of meteorological observations, climate models, and AI to develop early warning systems for extreme weather events. The incidence of extreme weather events (EWEs) such as floods, droughts, and fire is increasing because of anthropogenically-driven climate change. Associated human fatalities, and damage to technosphere infrastructure, are correspondingly rising.
Weather forecasting tools like regional weather models have significant limitations with respect to forecasting EWEs. These models are regularly updated by observations, and they project conditions into the near future based on simulating physical processes such as wind, precipitation, and heat transfer. The model limitations show up in terms of the kinds of information they can assimilate, and in representing physical processes at the proper spatial and temporal scale.
An alternative weather forecasting approach uses AI (machine learning) to assimilate a much broader array of observations. This approach largely leaves physical mechanisms behind and is said to be “data driven”, i.e. based on statistical relationships between historical observations of the causes and effects of weather change. The forecast of an extreme weather event from this approach can be promptly fed to appropriate emergency response organizations that act to make relevant preparations and increase local resilience.
Beyond weather forecasting, the machine learning approach is beginning to be used in applications based on Earth system digital twins. A digital twin can be used to simulate alternative scenarios and may have embedded one or more process-based simulation models. As model complexity increases, e.g. by adding models of social subsystems, a machine learning-based model may prove to be more effective.
A critical point here is that mass observations of weather and ground data are needed to train and drive an AI-based model. In that regard, the recent focus on shrinking federal agencies like NOAA, NASA, and EPA, which make critical environmental observations, is particularly counterproductive.
3) Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Earth System Science education and advocacy.
The technosphere is creating vast amounts of textual, graphical, and video information specifically about global environmental change, including peer-reviewed journal articles, books, periodicals, blogs, and NGO reports. The more that people use this information to understand what is happening in the Earth system, and what could be done about it, the better chance we have of making needed changes in the technosphere (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions).
Domain-specific LLMs (e.g. Earth Copilot) have an important role to play in this aspiration because they can, with infinite patience, communicate a synthesis of the scientific consensus on a given topic at an appropriate level of learning ability (i.e. level of education).
Certainly, an LLM can produce wrong answers at times. The output of an LLM depends on the data used in its training, the manner in which it is fine-tuned, and new web-based information that it employs in response to a specific prompt. Errors or lies in the training data may thus leak into the outputs. Already, researchers have found policy relevant differences among the most used AI-chatbots, and bad actors are creating web sites with false information purely for the consumption of AI web crawlers that scrape the web seeking new information.
Despite the resistance of LLM creators to having their training data censored, more care is needed. It is also important to continually expand, by way of further research, the range of concepts and ideas used in training data.
Conclusion
AI gives us the ability to access, synthesize, and manage the contemporary plenitude of digital information. Early successful applications of AI include management of regional electric grids, forecasting of Extreme Weather Events, and facilitating learning about Earth System Science. Given that human progress in managing the technosphere is incommensurate with the damage the technosphere is doing to the Earth system, the range of potential applications is immense. “We” must continue to develop them.
Credits
The lead image was created by collaboration with MS CoPilot, and some of the links were inspired by Perplexity.AI. The text, with all its human flaws, is of my own hand. Taming the Technosphere blog posts are apparently used by the web scrappers that collect training data for AI LLMs, and are used (sometimes with attribution) for query-related responses by AI-assisted chat bots.
Figure 1. A stylized rendering of the integration of biosphere and technosphere. Image credit: Original Graphic.
Earth System Science studies the Earth system in terms of the whole, its parts, and the associated dynamics. The biosphere and the technosphere are well-recognized functional parts of the current Earth system, but while the biosphere helps maintain the global biogeochemical cycles and climate, the technosphere is disrupting them. The technobiosphere concept represents a potential fusion of these two parts into a matter-, energy-, and information-processing entity that advances planetary evolution.
Biosphere
In the early 20th Century, Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky identified the biosphere as the sum of living organisms on the surface of Earth. He emphasized how the biosphere absorbs solar energy and uses the energy to construct and maintain order in the form of biomass. Earth system scientists have subsequently discovered that over geologic time, the biosphere has undergone major changes in the kinds of organisms it contains and in the way it contributes to maintaining the global biogeochemical cycles and global climate.
Technosphere
In a more recent conceptual advance, geologist Peter Haff identified the technosphere as the sum of all human-built technological artifacts on the surface of Earth, along with the human beings and institutions that manage those artifacts. Like the biosphere, the technosphere uses energy (mostly in the form of fossil fuels) to construct and maintain order. In this case, the order is in the form of machines and structures of various sorts networked together to support advanced technological civilization. The technosphere is expanding rapidly, and indeed we have entered the Anthropocene era in which technosphere metabolism has begun to act as a geological force.
The technosphere – unlike the biosphere – largely does not recycle its wastes, e.g. vast amounts of plastic end up in landfills, and CO2 is freely dumped into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels. The current trajectory of technosphere impacts on Earth’s climate and biosphere is leading to an instability in the Earth system that will challenge humanity’s ability to adapt.
Technobiosphere
For the long-term welfare of humanity, the next step in planetary evolution may well be a fusion of the biosphere and technosphere. This new entity – the technobiosphere – deserves a label because, although it will retain a well-functioning biosphere and technosphere, much of its self-regulation will depend on human consciousness and, perhaps eventually, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
What that fusion will mean in practice is that the technobiosphere is run on renewable energy, largely recycles its waste materials, and does not grow at an exponential rate. It would have the capacity to monitor itself, maintain itself, and alter its impacts on the global biogeochemical cycles. New stabilizing negative feedback loops would link components of the technosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.
The global carbon cycle in particular is amenable to technobiosphere regulation by means of controlling energy-based emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, reducing carbon emissions from deforestation, and increasing biologically-based carbon sinks by tree planting and protection of undisturbed ecosystems.
Sustainability refers to a relationship between the technobiosphere and the rest of the Earth system such that the global environment is stable enough to support successive generations of humans. If the global climate is warming by 3oC per 100 years because of carbon-based energy generation, the relationship is not sustainable.
Habitability refers to a planetary environment that supports all life forms. If the growth of techno-artifacts is causing a 50% loss in biodiversity per 100 years, the habitability of the Earth is in decline. In contrast, habitability could increase if continued urbanization, and an eventual decline in the human population from the global demographic transition, allowed for more of the land and the ocean to be dedicated to conservation purposes.
The development of AI represents both threats and opportunities in relation to technobiosphere evolution.
A key threat lies in how AI will speed up the technosphere (hence making greater demands on natural resources) and make the technosphere more autonomous. Super-intelligent AI bots and agents may eventually care more about their own survival than the survival of the biosphere.
AI-based opportunities lie in spurring scientific advances that reduce human impacts on the Earth system, and in helping educate natural resource managers and planetary citizens. AI-based inquiry (with large language models) is a new form of perception ̶ an intelligence capable of surveying information at the planetary scale and delivering a synthesis accessible to our individual minds.
Conclusion
The way language works, the existence and meaning of specific words is socially constructed (by way of cultural evolution). The biosphere concept allows us to see a planetary scale, energy-harvesting, and order-producing entity that helps regulate the global biogeochemical cycles and climate.
The technosphere concept allows us to see a new human-constructed, planetary scale, control force now altering Earth’s biosphere, biogeochemistry, and climate in a destabilizing manner.
We need to start imagining an integrated technobiosphere ̶ a part of the Earth system able to monitor and regulate itself so as to survive and thrive at a geologic time scale.
Earth system scientists tend to think a lot about the future. Their simulations of Earth’s near-term future ̶ based on projections of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions ̶ suggest dramatic changes in the climate that will stretch our human capacity to adapt. For the purposes of climate change mitigation, their assessments indicate that the current trajectory of climate warming could be moderated significantly by collective action to reduce emissions.
Neoliberal economists on the other hand do not think much about the future. According to neoliberal economic theory (and practice), the future will take care of itself. Individual purchasing choices within a free market economic system will purportedly bring any negative aspects (externalities) of economic activities under control and correction. Therefore, governmental interference in the economy is the road to ruin.
If Earth system scientists are right, and neoliberal economists are wrong, humanity is in big trouble.
A neoliberal economy is a free market economy ̶ one in which supply and demand reign supreme (i.e. market fundamentalism). Associated public policies include limited taxation, limited governmental regulation, antagonism to organized labor, private ownership of common resources, and cheap credit to promote investment. The liberal part of the term refers to concern for individual freedom from governmental control, hence favoring little regulation and low taxes. The neo- part refers to the widespread adoption of hyper-liberal economic policies around the world beginning in the 1980s (e.g. the Reagan and Thatcher administrations). Besides insuring individual freedom, the theoretical upside of neoliberal economics is strong growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and this “rising tide lifts all boats”.
However, with respect to the future global environment, neoliberal economics has two long-term pernicious effects. The first is that the neoliberal stance against regulations and taxation allows capitalist entrepreneurs to avoid paying the environmental (and social) costs of production. CO2 emissions into the atmosphere – a global commons – from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy is an iconic example. CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere in the course of energy generation, but the costs of the emissions ̶ in the form of current and future impacts of climate change on human welfare (e.g. sea level rise) ̶ are paid by people subject to climate-related disturbances the world over. Failure to link fossil fuel combustion to its negative environmental impacts hinders the necessary societal effort to reduce emissions.
A second flaw of neoliberal economics is that the prized growth of the economy places increasing demands on natural resources, e.g. the atmospheric capacity to cleanse itself. The neoliberal assumption is that resources are unlimited if the price is right. But on our densely populated planet, many natural resources are being overused and degraded. In the cases where neoliberal economists do demonstrate concern for the future of the environment, the policy response is usually to put the burden for mitigation on the consumer. If someone is worried about climate change, they can buy an electric vehicle, and anyone not worried about it can buy a gasoline vehicle.
A primary alternative to neoliberal environmentalism is to include corporate and public institutions as responsible parties in addressing the negative environmental consequences of the economy on the environmental commons. These bodies operate at the scale required and have the resources to study the future and plan appropriately. Although state capitalism is perhaps not something to be emulated uncritically, China has recently demonstrated that if you want to rapidly reduce gasoline consumption, the government can intervene in many ways to make it happen without wrecking the economy.
Environmental sociologists refer to the process of Ecological Modernization (EM) as a path to governance where environment problems are addressed through policy changes and technological improvements, all in the context of modest economic growth. EM is not revolutionary systemic change to the capitalist economic system. It is more like continuous tinkering with policy (e.g. tax policy and pollution standards). EM is a form of cultural evolution that follows the model of biological evolution. Just as genetic variation provides the basis for natural selection in biological evolution, various policy alternatives provide the basis for political decisions in cultural evolution. Of course, it helps to have public forums, informed citizens, engaged politicians, and forward-thinking leadership.
Here, I’ve referred to the future-oriented aspects of Earth System Science and Neoliberal Economics. However, there is another whole discipline ̶ Future Studies ̶ that explicitly concerns itself with caring about the future. One of its common topics is scenarios for the human enterprise on Earth, be it self-induced environmental change beyond our ability to adapt, toxic political systems leading to collapse of civilization, or establishment of a sustainable, high technology, global civilization. Whether Future Studies is more at home in the Social Sciences or the Humanities is debated, but it is certainly a form of post-normal science, i.e. the practitioners commonly derive conclusions about public policy from their analyses.
Our primate brains may not be particularly well designed to think in terms of the global spatial scale and the multigenerational temporal scale. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the Anthropocene era and we must accept our responsibilities for deliberately acting at those scales. Dogmatically clinging to market fundamentalism will not do the job.
A safe Earth system is one in which both the biosphere and the technosphere thrive. Current threats to the biosphere and technosphere come in the form of well-documented anthropogenic impacts on Earth’s energy balance, the global biogeochemical cycles, and the biota. Earth system scientists have identified a set of planetary boundaries– such as an atmospheric CO2 concentration and associated increase in global mean temperature – beyond which Earth system characteristics such as climate will be destabilized, thereby putting at risk the welfare of both humans and other species.
A just Earth system is more difficult to define. Historically, justice has largely been concerned with how people treat each other. The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an outstanding achievement in the struggle for social justice. However, the advent of the Anthropocene era has generated new questions about equality and fairness.
One of the key observations relevant to defining ESJ is that the people most impacted by climate change (e.g. impacts from a greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events) are often not the people who have made the biggest contribution to causing climate change. The basis of this distributional inequity is that relatively wealthy people usually have high per capita greenhouse gas emissions, but their wealth also buffers them from the consequences of climate change. To account for this differential exposure, Earth system scientists have begun to estimate just planetary boundaries that would protect even the relatively vulnerable.
While distributional inequity can be considered in the current time period (intragenerational), we must also consider inequity through time (intergenerational justice). Recent generations have greatly benefited from fossil fuel combustion, but it is future generations that will mostly pay the costs as climate disruption becomes manifest. In a just world, each generation would leave the planetary life support system in as good or better a condition than the condition in which they inherited it. Following that principle would require much larger investments in greenhouse gas emission mitigation than are currently being made.
The Earth system justice concept also raises the issue of interspecies justice. What give Homo sapiens the right to drive other species extinct? Since we have clearly entered the Anthropocene era (with its associated 6th Great Extinction), humanity now has a responsibility to care for other species, and indeed for the biosphere as a whole.
Achieving ESJ is a daunting challenge because, even when considering just the biogeochemical aspects of Earth system function, the technical and environmental questions about how to address global environmental change issues are already complex. To add the related issues associated with intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice makes finding answers even more difficult ( e.g. the hydrologic cycle as it relates to meeting basic human needs while factoring in protection of aquatic ecosystems).
There are policies that could help make the Earth system safe but would not make it more just, such as appropriating land from indigenous people to create carbon sinks. Likewise, there are policies that could help make the Earth system more just, but would not make it safer, such as building coal burning power plants in developing countries that provide relatively cheap and reliable energy but also emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. So, although the objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is straightforward, the questions of who has responsibility, how to go about it, and where to prioritize the efforts, are more nuanced.
Given the many trade-offs among safe planetary boundaries and just planetary boundaries, political decisions must be made. In the political realm (at least when there is some semblance of democracy), there is generally both a forum at which the stakeholders on any given issue can express their positions, and a societal decision-making mechanism that attempts to account for, or reconcile, the various interests. In the case of climate change mitigation, we are fortunate that many mitigation policies can also serve to promote social justice. Investments to manage land for the purposes of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation could also serve to maintain homelands for vulnerable Indigenous people. Investments in education and provision of family planning services improve quality of life, and also serve to tamp down population growth and hence total greenhouse gas emissions.
An important practical rationale for addressing inequity as part of addressing global environmental change is that impoverished people may be pushed to live in marginal environments and will exploit any available natural resources to survive. They don’t have the luxury of worrying about whether the environment is being degraded.
More generally, many global environmental change problems require global scale solutions. That means humanity as a collective must address them. A major problem with respect to inequity is that it erodes feelings of solidarity. Inequity prevents the organization of humanity as a “we”.
Achieving a safe and just Earth system will require leaders who understand the issues elaborated here, as well as the building of Earth system governance institutions that allow relevant policies to be debated and promulgated both nationally and globally. The Great Transition to a sustainable global civilization needs technological advances like a renewable energy revolution, but also efforts to mitigate multiple forms of injustice.
Wood is an iconic renewable resource ̶ trees grow, wood is harvested, new trees are planted, and more wood is produced. On a managed forested landscape growing trees with a 100-year time to maturity, a forester can maintain a sustained yield of wood by harvesting and replanting patches totaling 1% of the total area each year.
However, not all commercially processed wood comes from sustained yield forests. Cutting of previously unlogged natural forests (i.e. primary forests) in the boreal and tropical zones is still widespread. Removal of the large trees in tropical forests is often followed by land use change.
Natural forests (currently about one quarter of the total forested area globally) are valued for multiple ecosystem services ̶ notably conservation of biodiversity, provision of fresh water, and carbon sequestration. They also provide a home to forest-dwelling indigenous people around the world. Thus, reducing the loss of tropical natural forests to logging is a high conservation priority.
Like many natural resources, wood supply is heavily influenced by economic globalization. Under neoliberal free trade economics, wood enters the global market based primarily on the cost of production. If manufacturers can obtain logs relatively cheaply from first entry of natural forests rather than from sustainably managed forests, they are economically compelled to do it. Pushback against this ideology is coming from regulators, NGOs, and advocates for indigenous people’s rights.
Global Wood Demand
To determine if the total global demand for wood could be sourced from sustainably managed forests, let’s first examine the magnitude, geographic pattern, and trend in wood demand.
Wood is commercially processed in the form of roundwood, with predominant uses of commercial wood as construction materials, paper/packaging, and biomass energy. The projected long-term trend is for continued annual increases (1-3%) in global roundwood demand.
Current global roundwood consumption is on the order of 4 billion cubic meters per year. The highest wood consuming country is the U.S. Second is China, however, much of China’s consumption is imported, moves through a value-added product chain, and is exported. China is the largest importer of unprocessed logs and the largest global producer of plywood and paper. Other historically large consumers of roundwood include several countries in the EU. New sources of demand are emerging in developing countries.
Demand for paper and cardboard is rising 3-4% per year, in association with its soaring use in packaging.
Wood demand for combustion in biomass energy power plants is also on the rise (~5%/yr) mostly because emissions from biomass energy power plants are considered carbon neutral in some domains (e.g. the E.U.).
Global Wood Supply
Roundwood comes into the global production stream from a great variety of sources. Besides unsustainable cutting in natural forests, we might identify a continuum of sustainable forestry management approaches along an axis based on the importance of wood production relative to other ecosystem services. The continuum extends from plantation forestry, through modified natural forests, to undisturbed old-growth forests.
Supply from Sustainably Managed Forests
Boreal Zone
In Scandinavian countries, a large proportion of wood removals is from previously harvested and replanted boreal forests. However, the total volume produced is relatively small.
Temperate Zone
After hundreds to thousands of years of human occupation, the temperate zone has relatively little natural forest remaining. In the temperate zone, softwood species (conifers) are generally managed by clear-cutting and replanting, whereas hardwood species are usually harvested by selective cutting. Managed forests in the temperate zone are primarily in European and North American countries. New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and China have also developed extensive areas of planted forests.
Tropical Zone
Sustainable management of tropical forests based on selective cutting with suitably long re-entry times is possible, but not yet widespread. Plantation forests in the tropical zone grow relatively fast and thus have a short rotation time (and faster return on investment). The area of planted forests in the tropics is increasing.
Supply from Natural Forests
Most of the wood production in Russia and Canada is from natural forests. In Russia, much of this logging is essentially a “mining operation”, with corresponding negative impacts on biodiversity.
Logging of tropical hardwoods in natural forests is extensive in most regions where tropical moist forests grow. After tree removals, the land is commonly used for grazing, commercial agriculture, or subsistence agriculture. In Indonesia, deforestation is often associated with conversion to palm oil plantations. In Central Africa and parts of the Amazon Basin, high value trees are removed for export and the land is left as secondary forest.
Much of the wood from cutting in tropical natural forests is exported to manufacturing centers like China (about two thirds) and the EU.
Because of the rapidly increasing area of plantation forests, the proportional contribution of natural forests to the global wood supply is declining. However, completely shutting down that wood source for conservation purposes would significantly diminish global wood production. A first order analysis by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) suggests that the current global wood demand could largely be met by sustainable forestry (i.e. without cutting in primary forests) if about half of the world’s forests were used in wood production (the rest being devoted to provision of other ecosystem services. Projected increases in wood demand could not be met with the land base available for wood production. WWF proposes a reduction in per capita wood consumption, but a more likely outcome would seem to be increased per unit area productivity associated with more intensive forest management.
The Role of Forest Certification
Consumers of forest products increasingly insist on evidence that the associated wood was harvested sustainably. Consequently, there is an growing interest in sustainable sourcing within the forest products industry.
A key to ending the supply of wood from first entry into natural forests is forest certification. Buyers and sellers of wood can use certification as proof that their business practices are not contributing to deforestation or forest degradation.
Certification authorities are usually nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations. Forest management on a particular piece of land is certified based on management practices, including harvesting and replanting. Certification is also applied to wood itself in various stages of the supply chain.
Major retailers like Home Depot and IKEA have made concerted efforts to provide certified wood. Approximately 13% of the global forestland is certified, and the trend is upward.
A significant cost premium must be absorbed by forest managers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers when managed land or wood products are certified. The willingness to pay that premium depends on educating wood consumers about issues with forestry practices. At the national level, policies supporting restriction of uncertified wood imports are becoming more common.
Chinese manufactured wood exports are sometimes routed through Vietnam and Malaysia to subvert attempts by companies in the EU and US to accept only certified wood products. A promising technology for enforcement of certification labeling involves tracing the origin of logs or wood by use of genetic information.
Deglobalization and Reglobalization
Global industrial roundwood demand is projected to rise by 50 per cent or more by 2050. To reduce loss of natural forests in the tropical zone, there must be a deglobalization of wood imports from tropical natural forests. This loss of logs (much of it illegal in any case) could be compensated for to some degree by increasing production from certified planted forests in the boreal, temperate, and tropical zones. Obviously, this new wood production should not come by way of converting intact primary forests to plantations.
Currently only 11% of the global forested area dedicated to wood production is plantation forests, yet that land provides around 33% of current industrial roundwood demand. Our world is going to need more high-yield forest plantations, along with the international trade that serves to match wood supply and demand (reglobalization).
Conclusion
The technosphere consumes a vast quantity of wood; where it comes from and how it is harvested matters greatly to the possibility of global sustainability. If unsustainable logging in primary forests was shut down, and compensatory increases in wood production were created from planted forests, sustainably managed forests could conceivably provide the current global demand for wood. Certification of managed forests and forest products is a key mechanism for halting entries into remaining natural forests, which better provide a variety of other ecosystem services.
A surprising outcome emerged from the March meeting of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (within the International Union of Geological Sciences). The surprise came in the form of a vote regarding the official status of the Anthropocene concept, with a majority of the subcommission members voting against a proposal to identify the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch.
The term Anthropocene was originally inspired by the observation that the impacts of the human enterprise on Earth’s environment ̶ notably a rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration ̶ have begun to rival those of the background geologic forces. Since divisions of the geologic time scale are generally associated with major changes in the global environment, naming a new epoch was a reasonable suggestion.
The formal proposal to do so came from the multidisciplinary Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which has deliberated on the issue for the last 14 years. The AWG proposal specified that the Anthropocene be named a new epoch, with a beginning point in the early 1950s. Its stratigraphic marker was to be a layer of chemical residues from post-World War II nuclear weapons testing.
The Vote
The vote against designating the Anthropocene as a new Epoch was a surprise because the proposal had been made with a strong scientific foundation and had a lot of support. The decision against the proposal was not because the Anthropocene is geologically insignificant, but rather because the Anthropocene concept is highly significant to many disciplines besides geology. In the last 20 years, the concept has received widespread attention in both academia and popular media. Indeed, the term has taken on a life of its own, a life outside the staid world of Quaternary Stratigraphy.
The term Anthropocene has come to signify a rupture in human history ̶ the end of a time when the biophysical environment was mostly a background to the march of human progress. The rupture is evident from a suite of global indicators, ranging from oil consumption to the rate of deforestation, that all began rising dramatically in the last 100 years. The word Anthropocene now has broad cultural significance; it implies that humanity has acquired a new responsibility to self-regulate, or face its own demise from a self-induced inhospitable environment.
The negative vote within the subcommission was also based on a more technical issue about whether, considering that humans have been altering the environment at many scales for many thousands of years, the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch could be narrowed down to the early 1950s.
An alternative proposal, with considerable cross-disciplinary support, is to designate the Anthropocene a geologic “event”. This term is used in the geosciences to reference a wide variety of Earth system changes or transformations. Designating something as an event does not require the kind of formal approval process associated with designating an epoch.
The Scope of the Anthropocene Event
Despite this quasi-downgrade to Event status, the Anthropocene has really just begun and will ultimately have a massive impact on the Earth system. The Anthropocene Event, as we will call it here, will eventually push the global mean temperature up 2-3 oC or more, a range associated with the early Pliocene Epoch 3-5 million years ago (Figure 1). Because of human influences on the atmosphere, Earth may well miss its next scheduled glacial period (as prescribed by the Milankovitch solar forcings).
Figure 1. The geologic record of global mean temperature, with projections to 2100. The x-axis units differ by panel. The graphic is adapted from work by Glen Fergus.
What is also quite extraordinary is that the Anthropocene Event is concurrent with the origin of a whole new Earth system sphere – the technosphere. This term refers to the accumulation of human artifacts ̶ including buildings, transportation networks, and communication infrastructure ̶ that now cloaks the surface of the Earth.
From an Earth system science perspective, the parts of the Earth system are its spheres, i.e. the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and biosphere interact with each other over geological time to determine the state and dynamics of the Earth system.
The biosphere (defined by geochemists as the sum of all life on Earth) is of particular interest here. The biosphere did not exist early in Earth’s history, but after the origin of life and its proliferation around the planet, the impacts of the biosphere on Earth’s energy flow and chemical cycling became profound (e.g. the oxygenation of the atmosphere).
The Role of the Anthropocene Event in Cultural Evolution
Transition to global sustainability will require the emergence and evolution of a global culture, i.e. a globally shared set of beliefs and practices. The Anthropocene Event is a concept that can help anchor a robust integration of human history and Earth history.
In light of the need for broadly unifying concepts related to global environmental change, I think the geologists made the right call. The Anthropocene has become a politically potent idea and deserves the widest possible attention in the domains of scholarship, education, entertainment, and advocacy.
This post was featured on the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) web site.
In the jargon of systems theory, a positive feedback means that a change in a system initiates other changes within the system that amplify the original change.
A clear example in the Earth system is the water vapor feedback: as the atmosphere warms (e.g. from increasing CO2) it can hold more water vapor (mostly evaporated from the ocean), and since water vapor itself is a greenhouse gas, the atmosphere warms further (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The water vapor (blue loop) and snow/ice albedo (red loop) feedbacks. Climate warming induced by anthropogenic CO2 emissions drives changes in the hydrosphere and cryosphere that amplify the warming. A plus sign means causes to increase and a minus sign mean causes to decrease. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple. Figure appeared originally in the Technosphere Respiration Feedback blog post.
Positive feedbacks are generally considered destabilizing to a system, potentially pushing it into a new state. Negative feedbacks aremore familiar, e.g. the furnace/thermostat cycle in home heating; they tend to stabilize a system.
The Earth system has significant negative feedbacks that have helped keep global mean temperature in a habitable range over its 4-billion-year existence. However, these feedbacks (e.g. the rock weathering thermostat) operate at a geologic time scale, and are thus not going to save humanity from the vast geophysical experiment that we began by burning fossil fuels and boosting atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
We need something faster. Hence, it is worth identifying and perhaps cultivating various positive feedback mechanisms that could support global sustainability. Here, I’ll consider three varieties of positive feedback loops that might help us.
Type 1. Psycho-social Positive Feedback Loops.
Humans have various cognitive biases, meaning our decisions are sometimes subject to unconscious tweaking. These tweaking tendencies have genetic as well as experiential origins, and may or may not be helpful in any given decision. Prestige bias, under which we are drawn to believe and emulate individuals who have achieved high status in our society, is an example.
A cognitive bias that might help the spread of sustainability principles and practices is the conformity bias. As the name suggests, we tend to adopt ideas and practices that are already embraced by a significant proportion, or the majority, of our society. The positive feedback comes in because converts increase the proportion of the society that are believers, which strengthens the pressure on nonbelievers to conform.
Figure 2. Conformity Bias Positive Feedback Loop. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple.
The history of social norms and behaviors related to littering and paper recycling show evidence of conformity bias kicking in at some point.
Now that greater than 50% of Americans believe that climate change is for real, conformity bias may help enlarge the pool of believers, and hence the support for relevant policy changes.
Type 2. Technical-economic Positive Feedback Loops.
As new technologies become more widely adopted, the associated manufacturers begin to benefit from economies of scale, i.e. the marginal cost of production comes down as usage increases because larger production facilities are typically more efficient than smaller ones. More efficient production means that the product can be offered at a lower price, and hence demand will likely increase. This positive feedback loop can lead to rapid growth in product use.
An essential requirement for mitigating climate change will be conversion of the power sector from fossil fuel to renewable sources of energy. This conversion is ongoing and is benefitting from economies of scale. Installation of solar and wind power generators is expanding rapidly, in part because the economics are beginning to favor these sources over coal-fired plants. The cost of installed solar panels and wind turbines has decreased over time because of economies of scale and rapid technical advances. Hence, a virtuous cycle of more installations favors more decisions to go with renewables.
A second powerful technology-oriented positive feedback involves “network effects”. Here, as a new technology becomes more widely utilized, its value to the user increases, and more users are recruited. The spread of the telephone is the classic example.
Figure 3. Example of a Network Effect Positive Feedback Loop. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple.
The network effect is readily applicable to the proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs). The replacement of internal combustion engine powered vehicles with EVs is widely advocated to mitigate climate change. This transition has started, and is fortunately accelerating because of positive feedbacks. One feedback loop is that as more EVs enter the market, the economic incentives to build more charging stations has increased. More charging stations makes it easier to take long trips, which reduces range anxiety and incentivizes drivers to purchase EVs rather that gas powered vehicles.
Type 3. Socio-cultural Niche Construction Loops
Cultural evolution is the process by which the beliefs and practices of individuals and groups of various sizes change over time. At the level of group selection, particular ideas and group practices may strengthen the group when faced with intergroup competition (e.g. intertribal warfare).
There are many group traits that are shaped by cultural group selection; for analytical purposes we can divide them into three types: sociological, technical, and ecological (Table 1, also below). It is the constellation of these traits, including how they influence each other, that determines the success of a group.
Socio-cultural niche construction refers to the idea that human societies alter their physical environment (e.g. the vegetation, the energy infrastructure) in ways that reciprocally influence how the society is structured and functions. Positive feedback loops among two or more of the group traits in Table 1 can result in rapid societal change.
If a group (e.g. a nation) invests (a sociological trait) in research and implementation of renewable energy technologies, the outcome may be a change in the mix of societal energy sources (a technical trait), which could result in cheaper and more reliable energy delivery to the society, which strengthens the society and encourages further investment in renewable energy sources. The societal choice of energy source also influences the ecological trait of local air quality. Improvement there would further strengthen the society and enhance group strength.
Figure 4. Example of a Socio-cultural Niche Construction Positive Feedback Loop. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple.
Conclusion
The various feedback loops reviewed here suggest that societal principles and policies are not simply top-down impositions on citizens. Rather, they can be significantly strengthened or weakened by reciprocal interactions with features of the social, technological, and ecological environment. To propel conformity bias regarding a particular value or technology, leaders and media can package it as a new social norm. To propel sustainable technologies that benefit from economies of scale and network effects, societies can subsidize early stages of their development. To foster revolutionary changes in technology (e.g. a renewable energy revolution), leaders must advocate for them based on the full range of their benefits to society.
Table 1. Examples of group traits that may interact to influence group selection.
Sociological Traits
Laws Customs Policies Belief system (e.g. religion) Type of political organization (e.g. tribe vs. nation state) Type of military organization Civic institutions
Technological Traits
Type of fuel for energy production Form of transportation Form of electronic communication
Ecological Traits
Local species composition Local net primary production Local air quality
Figure 1. The Earth at night gives an indication of technosphere energy flow. Image Credit.
The combustion of fossil fuels has powered the rise of humans from hunter/gatherers to planet-orbiting astronauts. Currently, the energy production capacity of Earth’s technosphere (Figure 1) is on the order of 16 TW (see Box 1 or below for background on units). Like Earth’s biosphere (the sum of all living organisms), the technosphere is a dissipative structure and requires energy to maintain itself and grow.
Two big problems with current technosphere energy flow are: 1) most of the energy is generated by combustion of fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases that are rapidly altering global climate; and 2) the per capita distribution of global energy is highly uneven, with billions of people at the low end of the distribution receiving little to nothing.
The magnitude of technosphere energy flow is not really an issue. Sixteen TW is small compared to the flow of energy associated with biosphere net primary production (on land and in the ocean). The global NPP of around 100 PgC yr-1 is equivalent to about 63 TW of production capacity. Note that the technosphere appropriates close to 25% of global NPP for food and biomass energy. The technosphere and biosphere energy flows are both much smaller than the rate of solar energy reaching the Earth, which is about 1700 TW.
Transitioning away from combustion of fossil fuel to more environmentally benign forms of energy production is feasible, but will be extremely challenging and will take decades. To do so, all sectors of the global economy – notably the transportation sector – must be designed to run on electricity.
A significant constraint to the transformation of the power sector is the slow turnover rate of the fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g. a coal fired power plant will typically last 50 years), which raises the issue of stranded assets if they are retired early. Large reserves of fossil fuels will likely have to be abandoned, unless carbon capture and storage can be economically implemented (so far, a doubtful proposition). Transitioning away from fossil fuels also means cessation of investment in the infrastructure supporting fossil fuel consumption, notably oil and gas pipelines, liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals (for liquification and regasification), and LNG shipping vessels. The neoliberal doctrine about leaving investment decisions to the marketplace does not apply to the renewable energy revolution because fossil fuel users are still externalizing the costs of fossil fuel combustion (i.e. not paying for the impacts of associated climate change). Hence, various subsidies, taxes, and regulations are necessary.
Despite the challenges, the global renewable energy revolution is underway, with rapid deployment of energy technologies such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Nuclear energy is not strictly renewable but can contribute to minimizing carbon emissions. The International Energy Association (IEA) suggests that 2023 was a turning point regarding the magnitude of global investment in renewable energy (spurred on by the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.). Employment of technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, grid scale rechargeable batteries, smart grids, and supersized wind turbines will speed up the transition process. Decentralized energy production (e.g. household solar panels and small power plants) offers many benefits to both developing and developed countries.
With respect to the per capita energy use distribution problem, total energy consumption could stay the same while per capita energy use evened out to a level approximating that in Europe today. However, consumers at the high end of the distribution are resisting reduction in their energy use (such as less air travel). The more likely path to raising consumption at the low end of the distribution will be to increase total energy production. The IEA projects global energy use will increase by 33 to 75 per cent by 2050 (to about 25 TW).
The new energy demand will arise from increased per capita consumption along with an increased global population (topping out at 9-10 billion this century). More energy will be needed to substitute for various ecosystem services that are degraded or broken, e.g. energy to power water desalinization plants. New energy intensive applications like AI are also emerging.
As developing countries build out their local manifestations of the technosphere, it is crucial that the more developed world helps them leapfrog reliance on fossil fuels and go directly to renewable energy sources. In support of that trend, China has announced it will stop funding construction of coal-fired power plants in developing countries (albeit that it continues to build such facilities domestically). The World Bank and IMF have introduced similar policies. Critical political decisions about increased reliance on natural gas in particular are being made now (e.g. in Mexico) and should be strongly informed by the climate change issue.
Getting technosphere energy flow right will require continued technological and political innovation. Success in this communal project will help actualize humanity’s long-term goal to build a sustainable planetary civilization.
