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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate Justice: Towards A Proactive Response To Social Inequities, Vivek Shandas
Climate Justice: Towards A Proactive Response To Social Inequities, Vivek Shandas
Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations
Discussions about climate change have taken center stage. Claims of 'carbon neutral', and strategies for calculating and mitigating green house gas emissions (GHGs) have become common place from Beaverton to Bali. The discourse on climate change, however, remains largely an environmental one, with increasingly precise definitions of parts per million, downscaling climate models, and regional assessments for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These discussions are essential for understanding connections between local sources of GHGs and global consequences of our actions. But health and equity are equally critical dimensions of climate change, although these dimensions have had only limited investigation. Regional …
Planetary Boundaries: Exploring The Safe Operating Space For Humanity, Johan Rockström, W. L. Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin Iii, Eric Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. De Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander Van Der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan Foley
Planetary Boundaries: Exploring The Safe Operating Space For Humanity, Johan Rockström, W. L. Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin Iii, Eric Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. De Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander Van Der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan Foley
Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations
Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. We have identified nine planetary boundaries and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them. These seven are climate change (CO2 concentration …