Today, awareness of our perilous position has grown immensely, even if our ability to do something about it has not. Analyses suggest that human activities have already pushed planetary processes past stable boundaries through destruction of biodiversity, ocean acidification, and land-use change associated with agriculture, among other effects (see Steffen, W. et al., Science 347, 1259855; 2015). Over the past few decades, estimates find that human resource extraction has reduced the total outstanding capital of the world’s base of natural resources by some 40%. What is apparently our most pressing challenge — planetary warming — is just one of many challenges linked to our inability to limit the scale of our human activities and impacts.
Your institute does not have access to this article
Source: Ecology - nature.com
