Source: Radio New Zealand (world)
The “GDP-based growth model” that’s driven global development for 200 years “is obsolete,” a world-renowned scientist has told RNZ.
Johan Rockström pioneered the notion of planetary boundaries, which define a safe environment for sustainable human life.
In an interview on 30 with Guyon Espiner, Rockström said people must now achieve prosperity with innovation and more efficient use of resources within the nine planetary boundaries.
“We’ve reached what I call a saturation point on planet Earth,” Rockström said.
“Nowhere is there any more opportunity to operate according to the old economic paradigm … when one could admit that we were still a small world on a very big planet.
“You could add pollution to the atmosphere, you could overfish, you could kill whales, you could cut down trees, and it didn’t have massive planetary scale impacts.
“That era is now over. We’ve filled up the whole planet. It’s all saturated.”
Since the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th Century, economic growth has fuelled rapid gains in living standards for many people across the world. But the fossil fuels that helped power development are responsible for warming global temperatures, triggering climate change.
The planet is now less able to absorb the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions, Rockström said.
“We now have to be smart and operate within finite budgets of a safe operating space.
“This, of course, means that there is just one carbon budget, one nitrogen budget, one biodiversity budget, one freshwater budget that we all need to share.
“We do have evidence that, both with regards to returning to the safe operating space on energy and returning to the safe operating space on the food system, we have solutions. We can achieve that.”
* 30 with Guyon Espiner comes out every week on RNZ, Youtube, Spotify and wherever you get podcasts.
Millions have watched Rockström’s TED Talks about the planetary boundaries.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Breaching the 1.5 degrees limit
Rockström, who co-starred with David Attenborough in the 2021 Netflix documentary Breaking Boundaries, explains the world went beyond the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for warning in 2024.
Breaching this “planetary boundary” has already led to millions of people being impacted by floods, droughts, heat waves, and storms. Insurance companies have also assessed over US$200 billion (NZ$337b) worth of assets affected, Rockström said.
It affects labour productivity, agriculture and food security because of changes in hydrology, floods, droughts, and more disease patterns spreading across the world.
The 1.5 degrees limit is not considered permanently breached until it is measured on a moving 10-year average. This, however, is considered “inevitable” within the next decade.
“We are very rapidly moving in that direction, unfortunately,” Rockström said.
“And this is exactly what the planetary boundary science has been predicting, that when we lose the resilience in the Earth system, the buffering capacity goes down, which can lead to accelerated warming, even if we don’t necessarily accelerate our burning of fossil fuels.”
The “full catastrophic impact” could arrive within about 25 years, but the scale of the risk is being decided now.
“It’s the commitment moment. What we’re doing within the next five to 10 years will determine what happens over the next 25, 50, 100 years.”
Melting glaciers raise the risk of the ‘ocean conveyor system’ breaking down.
Photo: Supplied / Australian Antarctic Division
‘Unacceptably high’ risk of ice age conditions
Much less certain, but extremely impactful if it occurs, is disruption to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Rockström said there is currently a 1 to 10 percent chance of this, and it would mean “ice age conditions” for Northern Europe, and parts of Russia and Canada.
The AMOC is one of the three “thermohaline pumps” that move water around oceans, playing a massive role regulating temperatures.
In the past 100,000 years, scientists believe the AMOC has switched off several times. Melting ice sheets – which we are experiencing now – have caused shut downs.
“We have evidence today, which is quite unequivocal actually, that if it would shut down, it would have global catastrophic impacts,” Rockström said.
“It would have an abrupt catastrophic change of weather conditions in Northern Europe and North America and Russia.
“It would be an abrupt sudden cooling exceeding 10 degrees Celsius of reduction, which would be like entering an ice age condition for the Nordics, Russia, parts of Canada, but particularly parts of North Europe.
“That would be a very, very catastrophic event in that region.”
A likelihood of 1 to 10 percent for such a catastrophic impact is “unacceptably high”, he said.
“Nowhere in society we would ever accept that kind of likelihood.”
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