<story><title>Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries</title><url>https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Liquix</author><text>&amp;gt; Clearly, it is in humanity&amp;#x27;s best interest to...&lt;p&gt;Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by &amp;quot;humanity&amp;#x27;s best interest&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest.&lt;p&gt;To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the executive level of either organization one would be laughed out of the room for suggesting environmental issues should take priority over national security.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s not just two countries, it&amp;#x27;s every single country making these types of decisions for 100+ years... And if $country doesn&amp;#x27;t build that weapons facility or export that labor, $otherCountry will, therefore $country will be at a disadvantage. Repeat ad infitium.&lt;p&gt;Those in power are far more concerned with maintaining and leveraging that power than they are with &amp;quot;humanity&amp;#x27;s best interest&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries</title><url>https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>toss1</author><text>Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical &amp;amp; processes), and Biogeochemical Flows.&lt;p&gt;The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature &amp;amp; hydration, and so on, endlessly.&lt;p&gt;This is the food web.  If it collapses, we as a species are beyond fooked.  Because it is so complex (and even something relatively simple such as CO2-driven greenhouse effect climate change is too complex for the lower half of the population to understand), it is barely even discussed.&lt;p&gt;But make no mistake, the food web is under massive assault from all kinds of human activities (and even the artificial agriculture web is coming up against the hard limit of a phosphorus crisis).  This is likely to be a sooner and more catastrophic failure than the climate crisis.  The Fine Article nicely clarifies some of the threat.</text></comment>