Planetary Opportunities: A Social Contract for Global Change Science to Contribute to a Sustainable

Thread title is the title of an essay published in the journal BioScience in June. I hope you consider reading it

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with the help of a local library or other means. Here is a very short quote

“We assert that an emphasis on global biophysical limits at the expense of a focus on realistic solutions is insufficient, as are assumptions that technologies can always solve environmental problems.”

As you know, in PriusChat our attention to environmental (some would say earth system) science is generally restricted to what seems right or wrong in recent publications. As highlighted in the media or affinity websites. It that is enough for you, then you will find this thread superfluous.

Others will be interested in DeFries et al. approach. They highlight several successes that have been improved by improved understanding of these sciences. Greatly increased capacity to grow food, air and water pollution, central US droughts do not (or have not) lead to dustbowl repeats, ozone/Montreal. Actually it is a familiar list. They might have also claimed a piece of the 'medical' pie, but no matter.

For the future they suggest that we need more of this knowledge-based stuff, and that paths to make the information accessible and useful for 'policy' remain poorly developed.

So, are scientists doing the wrong things? No doubt this is true to some extent. Governments and resource extractors are probably doing some wrong things also (I said that, not DeFries).

But please read it. The world is changing in a variety of interlinked ways. Aiming for maximum benefit and minimum harm sounds good to me. To get there we probably need to become both more scientific and more civilized.

++edit the link looks bad so just look for this


Planetary Opportunities: A Social Contract for Global Change Science to
Contribute to a Sustainable Future

Author(s): Ruth S. DeFries, Erle C. Ellis, F. Stuart Chapin III, Pamela A. Matson, B. L. Turner II, Arun Agrawal, Paul J. Crutzen, Chris Field, Peter Gleick, Peter M. Kareiva, Eric Lambin, Diana Liverman, Elinor Ostrom, Pedro A. Sanchez and James Syvitski

Source: BioScience, 62(6):603-606. 2012.