One out of nine - Village Magazine

48 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 PB

Had that action not been taken then, much of

the southern hemisphere in particular would

by now be bathed in deadly levels of ultraviolet

radiation.

Among the most severely critical boundary

breaches now occurring are as a result of the

overuse of nitrogen and phosphorus, primarily

as fertilisers. These chemicals are devastating

many of the world’s waterways, leading to algal

blooms and oxygen-free dead zones.

In Ireland, the toxic eﬀ ects of nutrient

overloads into our waterways are becoming

ever more apparent. Lough Neagh, the vast

lake in Northern Ireland, is severely damaged

as a result mainly of runoﬀ from agriculture, as

well as raw sewage and other contaminants.

Similar blooms are being reported across

Irish lakes and estuaries, a problem that has

notably worsened since the abolition of dairy

quotas in 2015 and the subsequent rush to

intensify industrial-scale dairying operations,

using our political leverage at EU level to allow

thousands of Irish farmers a derogation to

exceed the EU’s scientiﬁ cally established

maximum safe limits for nitrates.

The overloading of the global atmosphere

with powerful heat-trapping gases, mainly

carbon dioxide and methane, means

we have fundamentally altered the

chemistry of the atmosphere of an

entire planet, and this is playing

out, as predicted, in ever more

extreme weather events, from

droughts, heatwaves and ﬂ ooding

events to more powerful storm

systems.

The ferocious summer of 2023,

which has seen devastating impacts

across much of the northern

hemisphere, is a harbinger of a far

more dangerous future, with rising

sea levels, coastal inundation, killer

heatwaves and ﬂ ooding disasters

that force the permanent

abandonment of entire regions.

While life is about to become

much more precarious and diﬃ cult

for many millions of people, human

impacts have already laid waste to

much of the natural world, pushing

tens of thousands of species into

extinction and drastically reducing

both the numbers and range of millions more.

This is the planetary boundary known as

‘biosphere integrity’ and the world’s genetic

diversity has been severely depleted as a result

of human actions. The current extinction rate

is thousands of times higher than the natural

or ‘background’ extinction rate. A key driver of

extinction has been the destruction of

ecosystems and their sequestration for

agriculture, fishing, mining, fossil fuel

extraction and commercial forestry.

Another boundary that has been smashed is

termed ‘novel entities’. This innocuous phrase

describes the witches’ brew of tens of

thousands of toxic artiﬁ cial chemicals, from

plastics and pesticides to PFAs, the so-called

“forever chemicals” that have been casually

unleashed into the biosphere.

Even in the relatively well-regulated

European Union, around 80% of man-made

chemicals are brought into use with little or no

testing or true understanding of their long-term

impacts.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, breaching one

critical planetary boundary is unfortunate; to

breach six is beginning to look like

carelessness.

n ancient mariners’ maps,

areas of uncharted waters

were often marked with

illustrations of dragons

and other mythological

creatures to signal to the unwary that

dangers lay ahead.

The modern equivalent of ‘Here be

dragons’ is a project which began in

the Stockholm Resilience Centre in

2009, with the aim of graphically

mapping the nine key ‘planetary

boundaries’ beyond which the

dragons of ecological disaster lay in

wait.

There have been two major updates

on the original 2009 report, the latest

of which was published this summer.

The multidisciplinary team that

carried out the research underpinning

the report looked at climate change,

biosphere integrity (functional and

genetic), land-system change,

freshwater use, biogeochemical

ﬂ ows (nitrogen and phosphorus),

ocean acidification, atmospheric

aerosol pollution, release of novel

chemicalsand stratospheric ozone

depletion.

Nothing was viewed in isolation; in

dynamic Earth systems, every

element interacts in complex and

sometimes unexpected ways with

every other element. “It’s pretty

alarming: We’re living on a planet unlike

anything any humans have seen before”,

according to Jonathan Foley, director of Project

Drawdown, who was involved in the original

research.

B r i e ﬂ y , this year’s update established that

six of these critical boundaries for the

maintenance of a stable climate system and

overall integrity of the biosphere have now

been breached, with two others approaching

the red zone: ocean acidiﬁ cation is close to

being breached, while aerosol loading

regionally exceeds the boundary.

Only one of the nine boundaries is currently

considered to be in stable and satisfactory

condition, and ironically, this is global ozone.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, damage to the

stratospheric ozone layer was ﬁ rst of all

established theoretically, then by observations,

leading to a huge public reaction and strong

and concerted intergovernmental action.

This was spearheaded by the US, culminating

in the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987

and the rapid phasing out of CFCs, the

seemingly inert man-made chemicals that were

wreaking havoc in the upper atmosphere.

Make no mistake, we had a narrow escape.

One out of nine

Of nine key environmental boundaries only

ozone depletion has been made safe

By John Gibbons

OPINION

The report shows only the last of the following 9 key ‘planetary

boundaries is stable: