Planetary Boundaries: Exceeding Earth's Safe Limits with Johan Rockström
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2024
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(Conversation recorded on June 19th, 2024)
Show Summary:
While the mainstream conversation about our planet's future is heavily dominated by the topic of climate change, there are other systems which are just as critical to consider when thinking about the health and livability of our world. Just like climate change, each of these systems has its own limits within which humanity and the biosphere can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. However, each also has a critical tipping point - known as a Planetary Boundary - past which Earth's systems may no longer be able to self-regulate or remain the comfortable and predictable home in which we've spent our entire history as a species.
In this episode, Nate speaks with environmental scientist Johan Rockström to unpack his team's work on Planetary Boundaries and the pressure that humanity is putting on them.
How do these critical systems work to regulate the stability and resilience of the biosphere, and how do we measure their health and tipping points? What are we risking as we continue on our path towards pushing each of these interdependent systems past the point where they can continue to function? Is it possible to reverse the damage that consumptive, growth-based systems have already done to our planetary home and prevent further destruction?
About Johan Rockström:
Johan Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist on global sustainability issues. He led the development of the Planetary Boundaries framework for human development in the current era of rapid global change. He is a leading scientist on global water resources, with more than 25 years experience in applied water research in tropical regions, and more than 150 research publications in fields ranging from applied land and water management to global sustainability.
In addition to his research endeavors, which has been widely used to guide policy, Rockström is active as a consultant for several governments and business networks. He also acts as an advisor for sustainable development issues at international meetings including the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC). Professor Rockström chairs the advisory board for the EAT Foundation and is a member of the Earth League and has been appointed as chair of the Earth Commission.
Support Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future
Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners
Watch this video episode on Youtube
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We're deep in the climate crisis, we're deep in the red on the climate boundary. |
| 0:05.0 | But what the planet boundary science shows clearly is that even if we were successful in facing our fossil fuels, |
| 0:10.0 | we would still breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius boundary, |
| 0:14.0 | if we do not come back into the safe space on the biosphere boundaries. |
| 0:18.0 | There's so few people who really recognize that 30, 30%, 30% of the carbon dioxide |
| 0:23.6 | that we emit from fossil fuel burning is actually absorbed by intact nature on land. |
| 0:30.6 | It's thanks to the biodiversity and the intact forest systems in particular that are buffering this. |
| 0:38.2 | And if you don't have a healthy planet, |
| 0:40.4 | that capacity of buffering that stress is reduced. |
| 0:44.0 | So my fear is that we were shooting ourselves in the foot |
| 0:47.1 | by emitting greenhouse gases and causing the climate crisis |
| 0:51.6 | and at the same time making the planet in her weakest state to deal with that |
| 0:57.0 | crisis. You're listening to the Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, |
| 1:05.6 | we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 1:14.0 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play |
| 1:19.8 | emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 1:27.2 | I would like to welcome Professor Johann Rockstrom to the program. |
| 1:31.7 | Johann is the co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in |
| 1:38.3 | Potsdam, Germany, which is a suburb of Berlin, where he leads an international staff of over 400 scientists and researchers, |
| 1:47.2 | including the team of scientists that presented the planetary boundaries framework, first in |
| 1:52.6 | 2009 updated last year in 2023. These nine planetary boundaries presented in this framework, |
| 1:59.7 | of which climate change is but one |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate Hagens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Nate Hagens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.