Tag Archives: collapse

Living Planet Report

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This year’s Living Planet Report paints a bleak picture of ongoing ecological collapse. I think this is an organization that has some incentive to be on the bleak side of average, but still I tend to buy into the message. The alarm is sounding, but not reaching the general public or our political leaders. People just don’t understand this like they do the simplistic concept of carbon emissions, and of course even that we are failing to address in an adequate way. What’s the elevator pitch for why it matters, even for people who don’t value or have much emotional connection with nature? In a word, it’s the food, stupids.

climate, conflict, and migration

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A new paper explores causal links between climate change effects (like drought, famine, and high food prices), violent conflict, and mass migration. And yes, the conclusion seems to be that climate change can be a big driver when the seeds of social and economic instability are already in place.

Climate, conflict and forced migration
Despite the lack of robust empirical evidence, a growing number of media reports attempt to link climate change to the ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and other parts of the world, as well as to the migration crisis in Europe. Exploiting bilateral data on asylum seeking applications for 157 countries over the period 2006–2015, we assess the determinants of refugee flows using a gravity model which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate, conflict and forced migration. Our results indicate that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, played a significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum seeking in the period 2011–2015. The effect of climate on conflict occurrence is particularly relevant for countries in Western Asia in the period 2010–2012 during when many countries were undergoing political transformation. This finding suggests that the impact of climate on conflict and asylum seeking flows is limited to specific time period and contexts.

abrupt ecological change

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Being able to forecast abrupt ecological change might be a good idea.

Abrupt Change in Ecological Systems: Inference and Diagnosis

Abrupt ecological changes are, by definition, those that occur over short periods of time relative to typical rates of change for a given ecosystem. The potential for such changes is growing due to anthropogenic pressures, which challenges the resilience of societies and ecosystems. Abrupt ecological changes are difficult to diagnose because they can arise from a variety of circumstances, including rapid changes in external drivers (e.g., climate, or resource extraction), nonlinear responses to gradual changes in drivers, and interactions among multiple drivers and disturbances. We synthesize strategies for identifying causes of abrupt ecological change and highlight instances where abrupt changes are likely. Diagnosing abrupt changes and inferring causation are increasingly important as society seek to adapt to rapid, multifaceted environmental changes.

Earth Overshoot Day

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Today (I’m writing on August 8) has been named Earth Overshoot Day 2016.

Earth Overshoot Day marks the point where we have pulled more resources, like fish, fuel and water, out of the planet than can be replenished. It’s also the point where we have put more pollution into the air and water than Earth can successfully deal with. Humans have been doing that for a long time, but ever since 1971, Overshoot Day has crept disconcertingly earlier and earlier. This year, Overshoot Day is a full 5 days earlier than last year. That’s the earliest it has ever been.

This is another way of attempting to communicate the ecological footprint concept. It would take 1.5 Earths to produce the amount of ecosystem services we deplete in one year, so that means we have depleted them two thirds of the way through the year, or month 8 of 12. The footprint is growing every year, which doesn’t just mean things are getting worse, it means they are getting worse at a faster rate. We don’t know how much worse they can get before our civilization enters decline, or whether the decline would be a sudden catastrophic one or a long slow one (which could have already begun without our realizing it.) But we know logically that there is such a point of no return. Reducing our footprint would be good, but it would just mean things were getting worse at a slower rate. To actually reverse our path toward the tipping point, we would have to reduce our footprint all the way to 1 Earth or push Earth Overshoot Day all the way back to December 31.