Can Humanity be a “We”?

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David P. Turner / February 16, 2020

The peer-reviewed literature and the popular media today abound with concern about human-induced global environmental change.  Articles often argue that global scale problems require global scale solutions: humanity is causing the problem and “we” must rapidly implement solutions.  Environmental psychologists have found that people who sympathize with or identify with a group are energized to support its cause.  Can a majority of human beings identify with humanity in a way that motivates collective change towards global sustainability?      

Let’s consider several key constraining factors and unifying factors relevant to making humanity a “we” with respect to global environmental change.

Constraining Factors

Notable sociopolitical factors that impede global solidarity include the following.

1.  Climate Injustice among Nations 

In the process of their development, the most developed countries burned through a vast amount of fossil fuel and harvested a large proportion of their primary forests, hence causing most of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.  But these countries are now asking the developing countries to share equally in the effort to curtail global fossil fuel emissions and deforestation to prevent further climate change.  At the same time, the impacts of climate change will tend to fall most heavily on the developing countries because of their lower capacity for adaptation.  The developing countries are pushing back on the basis of fairness, e.g. the outcome of the Kyoto protocol (albeit now obsolete) was that only the developed countries made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Rising Nationalism

Economists generally agree that economic globalization has spurred the global economy and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.  However, globalization of the labor market beginning around 1990 has also meant a large transfer of manufacturing from the developed to the developing world – and with it many jobs.

Likewise, immigration is helping millions of people a year find a better life by leaving behind political corruption, resource scarcity, and environmental disasters. 

Unfortunately, one effect of economic globalization and mass immigration has been political backlash within developed countries in the form of populism and nationalism.  Hypersensitivity to loss of national sovereignty is not conducive to international agreements to address global environmental change issues.

3.  Climate Science Skeptics

Although the global scientific community is broadly in consensus about the human causes of climate warming and other global environmental change problems, the rest of the world is more divided.  Most people in the U.S. accept that the global climate is changing, but only about half accept the scientific consensus that climate warming is caused by human actions.  Sources of skepticism about climate science include religious beliefs and vested interests. 

4.  Economic Inequality

Wealth inequality, both within nations and among them, is a pervasive feature of the global economy.  The rich end of the wealth distribution contributes to the vested interests problem as just noted.  At the poor end of the wealth distribution, the hierarchy of needs discourages concern for the environment; solidarity with the fight against climate change is a luxury when you are starving.

These four constraining factors are deeply rooted and are only the head of a list that would also include competition for limited natural resources and geopolitical conflict.  It is daunting to think about overcoming these obstacles to a “we” that includes all of humanity.  There are substantive ongoing research and applied efforts (not documented here) to overcome them, but in a general way let’s consider some equally significant factors that may help foster a global “we”.

Unifying Factors

The following rather disparate set of factors supply some hope for human unification under the banner of environmental concern.

1.  Our Genetic Heritage

Humans are social creatures.  Sociobiologists, such as Harvard Professor E.O. Wilson, have argued that many of our social impulses are genetically based.  We have an instinctual propensity to identify with a particular social group, and to draw a distinction between that group (us) and outsiders (them).  The average ingroup size during the hunter/gatherer phase of human evolution, which largely shaped our social instincts, is believed to have been about 30 people.  Remarkably, the size of the social group that humans identify with has vastly expanded over historical time − from the level of tribe, to the level of village, empire, and the modern nation-state.  Conceivably, that capacity could be extended to the global scale:  we might all eventually consider ourselves citizens of a planetary civilization.

The historical expansion of social group size was driven in part by military considerations  − the need to have a larger army than your neighbor.  Obviously, this rationale breaks down at the global scale, but a distinct possibility for inspiring global solidarity is the looming threat of global environmental change. 

Note that being a citizen of the world does not require rejecting one’s local or national culture.  Multiple sources of identity could include being an autonomous individual, being a member of various ingroups, and being a member of humanity in its entirety.

2.  The Advance of Earth System Science

A conspicuous general trend favorable to achieving a collective sense of responsibility for managing human impacts on the Earth system is growth in our scientific understanding of the Earth system.  From studies of the geologic record, scientists know that Earth’s climate has varied widely, from cool “snowball” Earth phases to relatively warm “hothouse” Earth phases.  Greenhouse gas concentrations have consistently been an important driver of global climate change, which gives scientists confidence that as greenhouse gas concentrations rise, Earth’s climate will warm. 

The scientific community also has expansive monitoring networks that reveal the exponentially rising curves for metrics such as the atmospheric CO2 concentration.  Earth system models that simulate Earth’s future show the dangers of Business-as-Usual scenarios of resource use, as well as the benefits of specific mitigation measures.  At the request of the United Nations, the global scientific community periodically assembles the most recent research about climate change, the prospects for mitigation (i.e. reduction of greenhouse gas concentrations), and the possibilities for adaptation. 

If improved understanding of the human environmental predicament can filter down to the global billions, we might hope for a strengthening support for collective action.

3.  The Evolution of the Technosphere

The technosphere is a new global-scale part of the Earth system.  It joins the pre-existing geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.  However, just as the evolution of the biosphere was a major disturbance to the early Earth system, the evolution of the technosphere is proving to be disruptive to the contemporary Earth system.  

Around 2.3 billion years ago, cyanobacteria evolved that could split water molecules (H2O) in the process of photosynthesis.  The resulting oxygen (O2) began to accumulate in the atmosphere, radically changing atmospheric chemistry.  Oxygen was toxic to many existing life forms, but eventually micro-organisms capable of using oxygen in the process of respiration evolved, which in time led to the evolution of multicellular organisms (and eventually to us). 

In the case of technosphere evolution, a process that emits excessive amounts of CO2 (combustion of fossil fuels) has arisen, which is altering the global climate and ocean chemistry in a way than may be toxic to many existing life forms.  One potential solution is that the technosphere can further evolve (by way of cultural evolution) to subsist on renewable energy rather than combustion of fossil fuels, thus moderating its influence on the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.

A characteristic feature of technosphere evolution is ever more elaborate means of transportation and telecommunications.  These capabilities – especially the on-going buildout of the Internet – allow for increased integration across the technosphere and tighter coupling of the technosphere with the rest of the Earth system.  Sharing results of environmental monitoring in its many dimensions over the telecommunications network can help with creating and maintaining sustainable natural resource management schemes.   

Through the popular news and social media, nearly everyone in the world can learn about events such as regional droughts and catastrophic forest fires that are associated with climate change.  It is thus becoming easier to have a common frame of reference among all humans about the state of the planet.

There is not yet anything like a global consciousness that coordinates across the whole technosphere.  However, the Internet is facilitating the emergence of a global brain type entity.  One indication of what the nascent global brain is thinking about is the relative frequencies of different search terms on Google.  Interestingly, in the algorithms that determine the response to search engine queries, a high frequency of previous usage for a relevant web site makes that site more likely to reach the top of the response list.  That process is evocative of learning, i.e. reinforcement through repetition.  Similarly, the Amygdala Project monitors Twitter hashtags.  They are classified according to emotional tone, and a running visual summation gives a sense of the collective emotional state (of the Twitterers).  Advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing may soon improve the module in the global brain that simulates the future of the Earth system.

4.  The Expanding Domain of Human Moral Concern

In “The Slow Creation of Humanity”, psychologist Sam McFarland recounts the history of the human rights movement.  Writer H.G. Wells, humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt, and others have helped develop the rationale and legal basis for including all human beings in our “circles of compassion” (Einstein’s term).  The concept of rights has now begun to be legally extended to Nature (in Ecuador) and specifically to Earth (in Bolivia).  Since protecting the rights of Earth (e.g. to be free of pollution) clearly requires that humans work collectively, we come to an incentive for global human solidarity.

Again, these four unifying factors are only the start of a list that might also include global improvements in education, as well as growth in the activities of global non-governmental environmental organizations. 

Conclusions

The field of Earth system science is producing an increasingly clear understanding of the human predicament with respect to global environmental change.  Scientist know what is happening to the global environment, what is likely to happen in the future under Business-as-Usual assumptions, and to some degree, what must change to avert an environmental catastrophe.

The process of changing the trajectory of the Earth system cannot be done unilaterally.  From the top down, an important step will be genesis or reform of the institutions of global governance – including institutions concerned with the political, economic, and environmental dimensions of governance.  This is a task for a generation of researchers, political leaders, and diplomats.  From the bottom up, individuals must be brought around as adults, and brought up as children, to adopt an identity that includes global citizenship and associated responsibilities for the global environment.  This is a task for a generation of educators, religious leaders, and business leaders.

If “we” human dwellers on Earth don’t gain a collective identity and begin to better manage the course of technosphere evolution, then we may no longer thrive on this planet.

Recommended Audio/Video, Mother Earth, Neil Young

Growth of the Technosphere

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David P. Turner / January 28, 2020

The growth of the technosphere is changing the Earth system, pushing it towards a state that may be inimical to future human civilization [1].  As technosphere capital − e.g. in the form of buildings, machines, and electronic devices – is increasing, biosphere capital −in the form of wild organisms and intact ecosystems − is decreasing [2].

Figure 1.  Decline in freshwater, marine and terrestrial populations of vertebrates.  Adapted from Ripple et al. 2015 [3].

The growth of the technosphere has tremendous momentum and we must ask if it can be shaped and regulated into something that is sustainable, i.e. able to co-exist with the rest of the Earth system over the long term.

Figure 2.  Earth system indicator trends 1750-2010.  Adapted from Steffen et al. 2015 [4].

Why is the technosphere growing so vigorously?  Let’s consider three quite different factors. 

1.  The most general driver of technosphere growth is what systems ecologist Howard Odum called the “maximum power principle”.  It states: “During self-organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency” [5].   Self-organization is a widely observed phenomenon, extending from the funnel of water formed in a draining bathtub, to inorganic chemical reactions that create arresting geometric designs, to giant termite mounds, and indeed, to cities [6].  Given Earth’s vast reservoirs of fossil fuel energy, and a selection regime that rewards growth, the technosphere will indeed tend to increase energy consumption, matter throughput, and complexity. 

2.  Underlying much of the momentum of technosphere growth is the global market economy.  Capitalism is essentially the operating system of the technosphere.  Corporations, the state, and workers are compelled to expand the economy and hence the technosphere [7]. 

The market economy rewards increasing efficiencies in production (to reduce costs) and often the route to greater efficiently and greater economies of scale is by investment in technology.  Technical progress is now the expected norm and investments in research and development are a part of corporate culture and national agendas.  Economists refer to the “treadmill of production” in which “competition, profitability, and the quest for market share has contributed to an acceleration of human impact on the environment” [8].  Economic globalization has geographically extended the market economy to the whole world.

3.  Historically, war has been one of the biggest drivers of technological expansion.  In the Parable of the Tribes, historian Andrew Schmookler describes the sustained pressure on societies to conquer or be conquered [9].  Technology advances certainly help in winning wars and national governments invest heavily in research and application of technologies for war.  The Internet began with U.S. Defense Department funding to build a communications infrastructure that was hardened against nuclear attack.

Humanity has of course benefited broadly as the technosphere expanded.  Billions of people now have standards of living rivaling those of royalty a few hundred years ago.  The proportion of the global population living in poverty continues to decline.

But even before the use of the term technosphere, scientists and philosophers had begun to question whether technology was always a benevolent force.  The concept of “autonomous technology” suggests that the growth and elaboration of technology can escape human control [10, 11].  The possibilities for a nuclear holocaust or a greenhouse gas driven climate change catastrophe are indicative of technology-mediated global threats. 

What can be done?

The maximum power principle does promote energy throughput, but there is plenty of scope for insuring that technosphere energy prioritizes renewable energy.  Carbon taxes may be the simplest approach to rapidly driving down fossil fuel combustion.  Comprehensive recycling, based on a circular economy, will help constrain the mass throughput of the technosphere.  Finishing the global demographic transition [12] will reduce future demand for natural resources.

Capitalism will not go away but could undergo a Reformation.  That means more corporate responsibility, better governmental oversight of corporate behavior, and increased attention by consumer to the environmental footprint of their consumption.

The global incidence of physical war is decreasing, which will help slow the growth of the technosphere.  Wars are often based on the threat of an enemy, but humanity may become more unified based on the common threat of global environmental change.  The Paris Accord is suggestive of the possibilities.

Implications

The trajectory of the technosphere is towards limitless growth.  However, we live on a planet – there are indeed limits to the natural resources upon which the technosphere depends.  Humans are only a part of the technosphere, thus cannot truly control it (13).  But they can certainly shape it .  Likewise, the technosphere is only part of the Earth system, thus cannot fully control the Earth system: quite possibly, the Earth system will respond to the environmental impacts of the technosphere with changes that suppress the technosphere and associated human welfare.  Improved understanding of technosphere growth in the context of the rest of the Earth system is clearly warranted.

1.  Steffen, W., et al., Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. 115(33): p. 8252-8259.

2.  Diaz, S., et al., Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change. Science, 2019. 366(6471): p. 1327-+.

3.  Ripple, W.J., et al., World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. Bioscience, 2017. 67(12): p. 1026-1028.

4.  Steffen, W., et al., The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, 2015. 2: p. 81-98.

5.  Odum, H.T., Self-Organization and Maximum Empower, in Maximum Power: The Ideas and Applications of H.T. Odum. 1995, Colorado University Press: Boulder CO.  See Hall review.

6.  Prigogine, I. and I. Stengers, Order out of Chaos. 1984: Bantam.

7.  Curran, D., The Treadmill of Production and the Positional Economy of Consumption. Canadian Review of Sociology-Revue Canadienne De Sociologie, 2017. 54(1): p. 28-47.

8.  Hooks, G. and C.L. Smith, Treadmills of production and destruction – Threats to the environment posed by militarism. Organization & Environment, 2005. 18(1): p. 19-37.

9.  Schmookler, A.B., The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, Second Edition 1994: Suny Press. 426.

10.  Winner, L., Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme of Political Thought. 1978: The M.I.T. Press. 402.

11.  Kelly, K., Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World. 1995: Basic Books.

12.  Bongaarts, J., Human population growth and the demographic transition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2009. 364(1532): p. 2985-2990.

13.  Haff, P.,  Humans and technology in the Anthropocene: Six rules. 2014. The Anthropocene Review:126-136.

Land Photosynthesis is Increasing

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January 20, 2020/David P. Turner

An image of the global biosphere in which depth of greenness on land represents annual photosynthesis.  Wikimedia Commons

Natural Processes are Slowing the Accumulation of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere − Strategic Land Management Could Boost That Trend

As global climate warms in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, various components of the Earth system are responding in ways that amplify or suppress the rate of change.  Most of these feedbacks are positive (amplify warming).  However, a natural negative feedback (suppresses warming) exists and it could be augmented by human actions.

Scientists generally agree that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, precipitated by human activities, is a major driver of climate change.  Hence, any process induced by rising CO2 and climate change in which less CO2 is added to the atmosphere, or more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered, constitutes a negative feedback to climate change. 

The most obvious and necessary negative feedback is a rapid reduction in fossil fuel emissions.  The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change points to progress in that direction.  Unfortunately, fossil fuel emissions continue to rise. 

Research in Earth system science is examining the operation of another significant, but naturally occurring, negative feedback to climate change.  Observations suggest that the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and associated climate change is spurring carbon sequestration by the terrestrial biosphere. 

Earth system scientists speak of the “carbon metabolism” of the terrestrial biosphere, referring to the uptake of carbon by way of photosynthesis and its release back to the atmosphere by way of respiration of plants, animals, and microbes (Figure 1).  When photosynthesis exceeds respiration, carbon is sequestered from the atmosphere.  A critical question concerns the degree to which humanity can purposefully augment this negative feedback and help slow climate change.

Figure 1.  The atmospheric CO2 concentration is a function of uptake by processes such as plant photosynthesis, and release by processes such as respiration and combustion of fossil fuels.  Wikimedia Commons.

The Terrestrial Biosphere is Speeding Up

Laboratory and chamber studies show that plant photosynthesis is generally sped up, and drought stress is alleviated, as CO2 concentration increases.  At the global scale, long-term observations are finding a trend of increasing global photosynthesis in recent decades as the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere rises.  The estimated increase is on the order of 30% based on four independent lines of evidence.

Terrestrial respiration (see Figure 1) also appears to be increasing, but at a slower rate.  The carbon mass difference between global photosynthesis and respiration is accumulating in the biosphere and helping restrain growth of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. 

The dominant reservoir for sequestered carbon is most likely wood.  Note that forests accumulate wood as they recover from disturbances.  Thus, the terrestrial biosphere uptake or “sink” for carbon is a function of both the disturbance history of global forests and the stimulation of wood production by high CO2.

One indication of an invigorated biosphere comes from observations of the atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa Hawaii.  The iconic “Keeling curve” (Figure 2) shows an upward trend attributable mostly to fossil fuel emissions, and an annual oscillation, which is attributable to terrestrial biosphere metabolism.  The annual drawdown in concentration is driven by an excess of photosynthesis over respiration in the northern hemisphere spring, and observations of CO2 in recent decades find a strengthening of that drawdown.  Contributing factors include a longer growing season, deposition of nitrogen from polluted skies (= fertilization), and CO2 stimulation of growth.

Figure 2.  Monthly mean atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (in red).  The black curve represents the seasonally corrected data. NOAA.

Increasing carbon sequestration by the biosphere is evident from the observation that the proportion of human generated carbon emissions that stays in the atmosphere (the airborne fraction) has fallen in the last decade, despite the large upward trend in fossil fuel emissions.  The airborne fraction was 44% for the 2008-2017 period, with the remainder of emissions accumulating on the land (29%) or in the ocean (22%).

Human Augmentation of Terrestrial Biosphere Carbon Sequestration

So, we have a natural brake on the rising CO2 concentration.  And it is one that could potentially be augmented by human intention. 

Thus far, human land use impacts such as deforestation and agriculture have tended to decrease biosphere carbon storage.  However, there is a large potential to deliberately sequester carbon in terrestrial ecosystems by way of several approaches.   

1.  Expansion of the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).  REDD consists of intergovernmental agreements that pay developing countries to protect forests.  The carbon benefit is both in terms of reducing carbon emissions and maintaining carbon sinks.  Remote sensing is increasingly effective in monitoring carbon stocks.  Norway has begun to make payments to Indonesia for reducing rates of deforestation.

2.  Making land management decisions in the context of the whole suite of ecosystem services.  Carbon sequestration in biomass and soil is a climate related service that compliments other services such as conservation of biodiversity.  Management of both public and private land could be shifted towards this comprehensive perspective.

3.  Planting trees − something that can be done at the scale of a suburban back yard, whole urban areas, or regions (Figure 3).  Satellite-observed greening in China is attributed in part to large scale tree planting.  Trees affect the absorption and reflection of solar radiation as well as the carbon balance, so care must be taken about planning large scale plantings.

Figure 3.  Forests accumulate large stocks of carbon relative to other vegetation cover types.  Wikimedia Commons.

These human-mediated carbon sinks will all benefit from high CO2 impacts on biosphere metabolism.  In contrast, the impacts of continuing climate change − independent of CO2 impacts − on these carbon sinks and on biosphere metabolism generally are difficult to anticipate.  At high latitudes, climate warming appears to be associated with vegetation greening.  In contrast, increased rates of disturbance in mid-latitudes − such as climate warming induced forest fire − may offset the strength of biosphere carbon sequestration.

In an optimistic scenario, radically reduced fossil fuel emissions along with increased carbon uptake by the land and ocean will cause the atmospheric CO2 concentration to peak within this century, leading to a gradual decline that is powered by biosphere sequestration (natural and augmented). 

Since we are already committed to significant climate change, that CO2 trajectory would still leave us with major − but hopefully manageable − adaptation challenges.  A stabilized CO2 concentration, would also reduce the possibility that the Earth system will cascade through of series of positive feedback tipping points.  That scenario would take hundreds to thousands of years to play out but it could push Earth into a state threatening to even a well-organized, high-technology, global civilization.

Peak Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Peak Carbon Dioxide Concentration

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David P. Turner / January 11, 2024 (update)

Figure 1.  Projections of CO2 emissions and concentration.  Image Credit NOAA

In 2020, a remarkable speculation circulated in the cybersphere to the effect that global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel combustion may have peaked in 2019.  Considering that recent formal projections generally indicated increasing emissions through 2030 or longer, this assertion was striking.  It matters because CO2 emissions determine the growth in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, which in turn influences the magnitude of global warming.

The atmospheric CO2 concentration is currently around 420 ppm (up from a preindustrial value of around 280 ppm) and is rising at a rate of 2-3 ppm per year.  The consensus among climate scientists is that rapid greenhouse-gas-driven climate change will be harmful to the human enterprise on Earth.  It would be good news indeed if CO2 emissions were on the way down.

Estimates for annual global CO2 emissions are produced by assembling data on consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as data on production of cement and effects of land use.  The sum of fossil fuel and cement emissions is termed Fossil Fuel & Industry emissions (FF&I).  Land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) is mostly the net effect of carbon emissions from deforestation and carbon sequestration from afforestation/reforestation.  Total anthropogenic emissions are the net of FF&I and LULUCF.  Two independent estimates of CO2 sources and sinks (GCP and IEA) differ slightly.

The suggestion that peak fossil fuel emissions occurred in 2019 held true in 2020 and again in 2021 and 2022, but 2023 saw a 1.1% increase over 2019. 

Intriguingly, a decline in LULUCF compensated for the increase in fossil emissions such that total anthropogenic emissions remained the same in 2023 as 2022 (11.1 GtC yr-1).  That result may hold in 2024 as well if President Lula of Brazil continues to succeed in reducing deforestation, and global fossil fuel emissions grow only modestly (if at all).

Several specific observations points towards lower emissions in the near-term future.

1.  Global coal emissions declined from 2012 to 2019 but have risen above 2012 in recent years, primarily due to increases in India and China.  However, coal emissions declined 18.3% in the USA and  18.8% in the EU in 2023.  Aging coal powered electricity plants in the U.S. are being replaced with plants powered by natural gas (more efficient that coal) or renewable energy.  Some coal plants have been prematurely retired.  A gradual phase out in global coal consumption is being driven by the price advantage of renewable energy, impacts of coal emissions on human health, and the reluctance of insurance companies to cover new coal power plant construction.  China has agreed to stop financing the construction of coal power plants in developing nations and India has pledged to stop approving new domestic coal plants.

2.  Peak oil use may have occurred in 2019.  Global demand in 2020 fell 7.6% because of Covid-19. It partially recovered in 2021 and 2022 and 2023 but remains below the level in 2019.  Structural changes such as reduced commuting and business-related flying mean that some of the demand reductions associated with Covid-19 have persisted.  Vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen rather than gasoline are on the ascendancy, sparked in part by governmental mandates to phase in zero emissions vehicles.

3.  Even a near-term peak in natural gas consumption is being discussed.  The GCP budget for 2022 showed a 0.2% decline in gas emissions and for 2023 a 0.5% increase.  Again, the price advantage of renewable sources will increasingly weigh against fossil-fuel-based power plants.  The growing importance of energy security at the national level also argues against dependence on imported fossil fuels.  Ramped up production of renewable natural gas could substitute for fossil natural gas in some applications.

It is likely that the approaching peak in total fossil fuel use will be driven by diminishment of demand rather than lack of supply.

Currently about half of FF&Iemissions remain in the atmosphere, with the remainder sequestered on the land (e.g. in vegetation and soil) and in the ocean.  The land sink is increasing in response to 1) high CO2 enhancement of photosynthesis and plant water use efficiency, and 2) policy driven impacts on land management (e.g. more reforestation and afforestation).

Once fossil fuel emissions begin decreasing and fall by half − and assuming the net effect of increasing CO2 and climate warming is still substantial carbon uptake by the land and ocean − the atmospheric CO2 concentration will peak and begin to decrease.  The year of peak CO2 concentration could be as early as 2040 (see carbon cycle projection tool below).

On the other hand, there is plenty that might go wrong with this optimistic scenario.  As climate change intensifies, the net effect on land and ocean sequestration could be a decline in carbon uptake.  On land, carbon sources such as permafrost melting and forest fires will be stimulated by climate warming.  In the ocean, warming will intensify stratification, thereby reducing carbon removal to the ocean interior.  The steady increase in the ocean carbon sink since around 2000 has stalled in recent years, for poorly understood reasons.  If fossil fuel emissions are not significantly abated in the coming decades, the CO2 concentration could still be rising in 2100 (Figure 1).

Recommended:  Interactive CO2 Emissions and Concentration Projection Tool.

The Second Revival of Gaia

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January 11, 2020/David P. Turner

Gaia was originally a figure from Greek mythology: the mother goddess who gave birth to the sky, the mountains, and the sea.  Gaia was adopted by the Romans when they conquered the Mediterranean basin, but her myth was largely abandoned with the ascendency of Christianity by the third century CE.

The first revival of Gaia was a product of the nascent Earth system science community in the 1970s.  Atmospheric chemist James Lovelock was impressed by the finding of geologists that life had persisted on Earth for over 3 billion years despite a 25% increase in the strength of solar radiation (associated with an aging sun), and numerous catastrophic collisions with asteroids.  He also understood that the chemistry of the atmosphere − which provides oxygen for animal respiration, protection from toxic solar UV-B radiation, and influences the global climate − was maintained by the metabolism of the biosphere. 

These observations led him to suggest that the Earth as a whole was in a sense homeostatic, it was able to maintain certain life enhancing properties in the face of significant perturbations.    

In casting around for a name to give this organism-like version of the planet, he was inspired by author William Golding to revive the term Gaia.  Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis went on to write many influential peer-reviewed papers, and later books, on Gaia.

By the 1990s, the question of what regulated the functioning of the Earth system had become of more than academic interest.  Earth system scientists had observed that the Earth system was changing and begun to worry about possible impacts of those changes on the human enterprise.  Concentrations of greenhouse gases were rising, stratospheric ozone was declining, and a wave of extinctions was sweeping the planet. 

Geoscientists were initially intrigued by the Gaia Hypothesis about planetary homeostasis, hoping perhaps that Gaian homeostasis might save us from ourselves.  But by around 2000 they had largely rejected Gaia as an entity.  Many of the feedbacks in the Earth system (see my Teleological Feedback blog) were positive (amplifying climate change) rather than negative (damping), hence not contributing to homeostasis.

The second revival of Gaia came predominantly from scholars in the humanities.  Historians typically begin human history about 10,000 years ago when humans adopted an agricultural way of life.  However, the discovery that humans have recently begun to alter the global environment on a geologic scale changes everything (as activist Naomi Klein says).  The Earth system is no longer a benevolent background state that will provide a growing humanity with unlimited resources.  Earth has a Gaian history that is now imposed upon by human history.  The new field of Big History aims to juxtapose the geologic and anthropocentric time frames.

Historians needed a term to evoke an Earth system that in a sense has its own agency, and scholars like science historian Bruno Latour and philosopher Isabelle Stengers settled on Gaia.  They emphasized Gaia not as a nurturing mother, but rather a force that will smack humanity down if the current trajectory of global environmental change continues.

In a recent hybrid interpretation, geoscientist Tim Lenton and humanities scholar Bruno Latour have dubbed the newly revived Gaia as Gaia 2.0.  This version refers to an Earth system on which a sentient species has evolved and begun to alter the planet but has collectively taken on the project of developing an advanced technological civilization (a technosphere) that will live on the planet sustainably.  That means comprehensive renewable energy, nearly closed material cycling, conservation of biodiversity to support the background metabolism of Gaia 1.0, implementation of multiple strategies to moderate climate change, and forms of governance that facilitate self-regulation at multiple scales.

Gaia 2.0 is the combination of the pre-human Gaian Earth system and the recently emergent technosphere.

The Teleological Feedback

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January 6, 2020/David P. Turner

Earth system scientists commonly refer to feedbacks in the climate system. 

A feedback loop within a system means that a change in one part or component of the system induces a change in another component that either amplifies (positive feedback) or dampens (negative feedback) the initial change. 

The classic positive feedback related to global climate change and the Earth system is that warming of the global climate caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere results in reduction in snow cover and sea ice, which causes less reflectance of solar radiation, and hence more absorption of solar radiation by Earth’s surface, and more warming.  A potential negative feedback is if warming increases evaporation, which causes more clouds, which reflect more solar radiation, and hence cool the climate.  Most of the feedbacks in the climate system are positive.

By burning fossil fuels and pushing up the atmospheric CO2 concentration, humanity is unintentionally warming the global climate and inducing multiple climate system feedbacks.

A big question is whether humanity can collectively begin to purposefully impact the Earth system in the form of a negative feedback to climate change, i.e. begin to slow down the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations and even begin to draw down those concentrations.  This willful action would be a teleological feedback to our unintended warming of the Earth system by way of greenhouse gas emissions.

Teleological feedback. The segmented line indicates the potential for a deliberate societal influence on the Earth system.

A disturbing paradox about current climate change is that by increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration, humanity has shown that we are the equivalent of a geological force.  But humanity thus far is not organized enough to purposefully shape the Earth system. 

What we don’t have is much political will to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nor the right international institutions to manage a global scale response. 

Political will comes from lots of sources, but maybe the most likely source is that as more and more people experience extreme weather events, sea level rise, and the other impacts of climate change, they will support mitigation efforts (e.g. a carbon tax).  Australia in 2020 appears to be a test case for this proposition.

Also, we might hope for political leaders who understand the situation and are committed to doing something about it.

Regarding global environmental governance, the size and strength of relevant international institutions are incommensurate with the challenge of global environmental change.  At the very least, a stronger United Nations Environmental Program or a new U.N. World Environmental Organization is needed.

Recommended Reading

Lenton, T. 2016. Earth System Science: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

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Discovery of the Technosphere

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Earth System Science Discovery of the Technosphere

January 5, 2020/David P. Turner

The field of Earth System Science is a relatively young and is still working out how best to characterize Earth’s parts.  A key difficulty is with including the human dimension in a comprehensive description of the contemporary Earth system.  Earth scientists like to think in terms of the Earthly spheres and their interactions, e.g. the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.  By way of its industrial might, the global human enterprise recently has begun to exert an influence on the Earth system that is the equivalent to one of these spheres – effectively we have become a “geologic force”.  One proposal for characterizing this newly evolved global scale presence is to call it the “technosphere”.

To gain an appreciation for the meaning of technosphere, it helps to draw an analogy to the term biosphere.  We consider the biosphere to consist of all life on Earth.  It lives on energy, mostly in the form of solar radiation that is converted to biomass by photosynthesis, and it has a throughput or cycling of mass, mostly in the form of carbon and essential nutrients.

The Earth system existed before the origin of life and the evolution of the biosphere.  But once in place, the biosphere began exerting a strong influence on the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean, as well as on the global climate. 

Likewise, the technosphere is a globe-girdling network of artifacts −including all machines, buildings, and electronic devices – that lives on energy, mostly derived from fossil fuels, and has a throughput of mass (food, fiber, minerals).  The technosphere is growing rather irrepressibly, and like the biosphere before it, has begun to alter the global climate.

In a systems-oriented worldview, we try to differentiate parts and wholes, and to understand their relationship.  Generally, a part does not control the whole.  Thus, a critical feature of the technosphere is that humans are only a part of it, and correspondingly humanity cannot fully control it.  The technosphere is said to have agency, its own agenda.  It thrives on ever greater flows of energy and mass, which is not surprising when you realize that capitalism is its operating system.

Now that Earth system science has “discovered” the technosphere, we can study its structure, properties, dynamics, and how it interacts with the rest of the Earth system.  An awareness that we serve the technosphere as much as it serves us may help us redesign and rebuild it in a way that makes a human-occupied Earth system more sustainable.

Recommended Reading

Earth’s ‘technosphere’ now weighs 30 trillion tons

Zalasiewicz, J., et al. 2017. Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective. Anthropocene Review. 4:9-22.

Will Steffen , Katherine Richardson, Johan Rockström, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Opha Pauline Dube, Sébastien Dutreuil, Timothy M. Lenton and Jane Lubchenco. 2020. The emergence and evolution of Earth System Science. Nature Reviews, Earth and Environment, January 2020).

Haff, P. 2014. Humans and technology in the Anthropocene: Six rules. Anthropocene Review. 1:126-136.

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