After 11,000 years of remarkably stable climate that created conditions conducive to the evolution of civilizations, humanity is confronted with multiple global crises. This talk gives a scientific update of the risks of destabilizing the planet, providing evidence that six of nine Planetary Boundaries are already transgressed today, and in turn offering a new definition of sustainability. The increasing frequency and amplitude of extreme events is just one consequence of overshooting the 1.5°C global warming limit – a real biophysical limit, not just a political target – beyond which multiple tipping points in the Earth system are not only likely to be triggered, but run the risk of setting off tipping cascades.
About the lecturer
Johan Rockström is Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor of Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam.
Yeah thanks uh Clement and it’s a great honor to be here at the simbag Institute to give this this lecture what I want to do in the next 4 minutes is to give you and I kind of warned you already in the beginning uh a scientif ific update on
The Diagnostics of the state of the planet and the risks we’re facing in the coming decades so I will not focus so much on Pathways to Solutions but rest assured we have ample evidence that the door is still open even though the window is rapidly closing for a
Transition towards a safe landing for Humanity incoming Generations on planet Earth but I feel today at the end of the third Super elino with unprecedented ented deviations away from anything we’ve observed in in since we started measuring change of environmental conditions on planet Earth this year is
Very special and we’re just just having cop 28 around the corner which I argue to be the final chance we have to really start embarking on a fossil fuel phase out this is the mitigation cop this is the chance we have to really start getting serious on the transformation
Towards a decarbonized future so I’ll be doing this uh from a n system perspective and um yeah let’s kick off the ride now the starting point for any lecture of this kind must be I would argue on the most important message that science has produced I would argue over
The next over the last 30 years namely the empirical evidence that we’ve entered a whole new geological Epoch we’re no longer in the aolo scene we’ve now transitioned into the anthropos scene anthros for humans in Greek we are now the modern Enterprise of the industrial globalized world the
Dominating force of change on planet Earth the scale the speed and the interconnectivity is unprecedented we are today exceeding the forces of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or or solar uh forcing on planet Earth we are at the rate of change exceeding this even the pandemic is actually a
Manifestation of the anthropos scene we know that this is another hockey stick of the past 50 years we have a very very sharp rise in zoonotic viral disease outbreaks which coid 19 uh is and that this is an example of of risks we increasing we facing when we lose
Functions in the living biosphere and the evidence here is is overwhelming we’re not only deeply in a climate crisis we’re deeply in an ecological crisis 70% of the populations of vertebrates have been lost since 1970 we’re facing nothing less than a massive six Extinction event with a 1 million
Known species out of 8 million being at risk of of being Lost based on Research not least from the sanken BG Institute but also mapped in the ipbs the intergovernmental platform on biodiverse and ecosystem Services we published U two weeks ago the climate state of climate science in
2023 together with Bill Ripple and colleagues and and are forced in that AR itical based on the empirical evidence you see the red curves here of how we are moving away from anything that we’ve observed in terms of mass ice lost in Antarctica or Surface temperatures in
The ocean or Global sea ice extent or Global surface temperatures we are therefore forced today to ask ourselves what What’s Happening Here we do not understand this it does not uh get represented in our climate models are we approaching a state shift in in the state and the stability of the Euros
System this is a question it’s actually a question that we posed already in a paper in 2017 which became quite um discussed in Germany not least because it uh it gave the the word of the Year here where we proposed that are we now forced to consider the risks of moving
Towards a hot house Earth State the highsight uh debate in in Germany and the evidence for that is that we losing resilience in your system and I’ll come to that that this is what worries me most of all it’s not the the the climate warming on its own is that we are
Continuing to cause Rising energy imbalance on planet Earth on a planet that is losing its capacity to buffer that stress this is what really is worrying and nobody knows if that’s a state shift or how much the planet can cope with and this is one of the big
Scientific challenges we have but you know when when yesterday the latest observations for October shows this continuous deviation outside from anything we’ve seen over the past 50 years in terms of global temperature or the data that now confirms that this is in fact the third Super El Nino year in 2023 with a
95% probability of now hitting the highest temperature we’ve ever recorded 1998 2016 2016 still being the warmest temperature on record 23 as you show as you see here basically inevitably will be a year that may not touch 1.5 we have been at 1.5° cus of warming in September it will
Probably not be that on average but it just shows that we have more and more scientific support that the interactions between uh the big dynamics of the Euros system in this case anal Dynamic with human amplification causes these super aninal events as we’re seeing here what worries us a lot in the climate
Community is that the overall forcing caused by our emissions of greenos gases is not only as simple as carbon dioxide from oil coal and gas this is the latest update from the forer out paper coming out from the working group one team in in the ipcc 6 assessment but it’s a it’s
An update um basically 2 years later showing the 3 watts per square meter on n forcing caused by our all emissions of Ginos gases but when you look at the line under the zero line here you see a negative forcing of minus1 watt per square meter which is the to quote uh
Jim Hansen one of the leading climate scientists that warned Humanity already in 1988 during his Congressional uh testimony who calls this the fan bargain because that negative curve is all the air pollution in cities across the world which is the aerosol loading one of the planetary boundaries that causes a
Cooling of the planet but leads to 89 million people dying prematurely each year but what you see here since 2021 there is a slight pandemic impact here but the rebound is clear we are on the path to clean up our cities this is really positive we’re on our way also to
Be much more effective in shutting down really dirty diesel in the in the commercial shipping industry in the world so the lower atmosphere is cleaning which is causing us to lose this fum bargain that we have shoving under the carpet uh very significant up to 25% of the warming caused by one
Environmental problem air pollution while we have the warming part from greenhous gas emissions which we’re not making progress on so it’s not surprising if we get even a very rapid uh bump up of temperature rise don’t be surprised by that because it could simply be that we’re losing this cooling
Element of air pollution the pathway we need to follow is also misunderstood and this is potentially uh what I would call the biggest worry we’re facing today and something you’ll hear a lot about I hope at cop 28 what you see to the left here is from the ipcc 6 assessment on the
Pathways we need to follow to have a 50% chance of holding 1.5 degrees C I’ll come back to how I Define 1.5 now what you see here is that it’s not only that we need to totally decarbonize the energy system which you see reaches a net zero point roughly uh by 2040 we
Need to be successful also on all the other non CO2 gases which is basically nitrous oxide and methane but we also need to reach as you see much much earlier a net zero point for land use somewhere around 2030 now this is something we basically never ever discuss that in fact the only
Reason the ipcc in its roughly 100 climate modeling runs can give us a remaining Global carbon budget that allows us for what I call an orderly phase out from the fossil fuel driven World economy and orderly phase out following what we published at The potam Institute a few years back called the
Carbon law which is cutting emissions by half every decade so 50% by 2030 another 50% 2040 to a net Z by 2050 that’s is exactly by the way what the European Union has adopted in the Fit 4 55 that’s the orderly phase out but the only reason science gives us this carbon
Budget is that we have very optimistic assumptions in the climate models that are kind of behind the scenes of this these mathematical machineries that we run and I’ve listed those optimistic assumptions on this table here so number one is that the remaining carbon budget
That is given to us in the I PCC is 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide it’s actually cut by half already now to 250 gatons so we are not able to reduce the emissions every year we emit 40 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and another 10
Billion tons just from the nitrog oxide and methane carbon dioxide equivalents that eats up the budget so fast that we’re down to 250 gatons now that dear friends is equivalent to 6 to 7 years of emissions so if we don’t bend the curve before 2025 which ipcc says is necessary
We will have consumed the remaining carbon budget before the end of this decade to have any chance of holding 1.5 but as if that was not enough look at the list the number two is that the models assume on average that the the so-called afolu sector which is
Agriculture at large will go from basically being a 10% emitter 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide today to quite magically become a minus 5 SN within the next 10 years that is dear friends a Green Revolution that that that’s assuming an agriculture revolution in the world that the
Agriculture system will go from source to sync in the blink of time so that is number two but that’s not enough because number three is this assumption that intact nature on land will continue to provide us with this massive subsidy to the world economy namely a 10.6 bill
Tons of carbon dioxide per year 25% of emissions are taken up by intact ecosystems on land what are these intact ecosystems well they are the remaining 50% of all the land areas that we have not yet transformed into cities roads and agriculture okay so this is the insurance systems that keeps the planet
Stable for the moment but as you know we are rapidly continuing to encroach on these systems and losing many of these big biomes such as the Amazon rainforest capacity to have a carbon sink the fourth one is the same thing for the ocean another 25% and the fifth one is
That as if all this was not enough we’re also assuming that from 2050 onward we’re going to scale to a massive level negative emission Technologies all forms of carbon capture and storage the engineering Technologies of direct air capture biological carbon caption storage retrofitting into carbon Cal
Fire plants you’ll hear a lot that Co 28 that um we should allow for coal as long it it has CCS coupled to it so difficult to Abate coal can be still be allowed with ccs Technologies are we doing this today well there are some pilot projects actually Germany has been leading that
In the world there are a few million tons we have to go to billion tons okay all of this has to uh be accomplished to have a 50% chance of holding 1.5 and that is what gives us this orderly phase out and and to just top
This up with a little bit extra salt in the wound the models assume no surprise there’s not one climate model in these runs that that assumes that some surprise happens with thrwing Perma Frost or collapse of col Reef systems or forest diacks or forest fires or that we
Get a Tipping Point in the green and ice sheet oh no they assume linear change actually all the models assume that number four and five here stay stable oh sorry three and four intact nature and oceans this to me is is is such a such a deep
Insight which of course is not meant to scare it is meant to remind the policy makers that let’s get on with it and not only that let’s let’s at least do the easy part first because if you look at this list I would argue that the easiest
Part is get let’s get off oil coal and gas I mean get off fossil fuels is the number one path because we have so many other parts that we also need to take on which are much more comp complex the biodiversity challenge the freshwater challenge all the living biospheres the
Food system transition and these are generally I would argue policy-wise 15 to 20 years behind the climate agenda so the climate agenda is much more mature as well so basically to illustrate this in a in a kind of a more um visual way this is the journey we have um phasing
Out fossil fuels in Gray the food system transition from brown to orange scaling magically this uh carbon capture storing technology in yellow and then you see the green and blue resilience Parts this is the journey therefore I would argue today that scientifically we can say the
Climate crisis you you can you can focus on that only if you if you feel that that is your attention but even that requires a global sustainability transition you cannot deal with the climate crisis only through an energy transition you can only deal with a climic crisis with a planetary boundary
Approach you need to take the whole system into account the Dilemma of of course is as you know we are not making progress we’re actually following a pathway even after the latest updates the this is the big stock take Year by the way this is the year according to
The legally binding Paris agreement where all the countries in the world needs to come to the climate negotiations to update the national plans in line with science now the updates so far take us to 2.7 de cus by the end of this Century
I can spend a lot of time on 2.7 let me just put it very simple it’s equal to disaster period there’s absolutely no scientific evidence that we can take responsibility for our co-citizens and future generations with a 8 n 10 billion people world as we know it in 2.7 in
Fact the last time we had 2.7 was like 4 million years ago so we are at the nun nun Museum here I think it’s fair to say Clement that that’s not a very uh likely place that we can say with certainty could support human the the world as we
Know it and I’ll come back to that also in in in some of the deeper paleoclimatic evidence we have now the ipcc is really taking on board this whole systems perspective I I must really emphasize that this is the high level um conclusions from the six assessment the latest assessment in the
Intergovernmental pan climate change we have unequivocal evidence that we’re causing the climate crisis it’s hitting human well-being today it’s not a crisis in the future it’s now but the second part is what I find to be the entry point in in in the science I’m presenting to you here today we’re
Threatening planetary Health we are today threatening the stability of the planet that’s the point we’ve reached we’re not in a in a kind of an environment or problem somewhere in a corner we’re actually putting the existential agenda on the table even the ipcc recognizes that and why am I
Referring to that specifically ipcc well because what is the ipcc well the ipcc dear friends is the common denominator nature and the consensus that across the entire science Community that’s the floor we stand on if there’s any critique one can give to the ipcc and I
Can tell you I lead an Institute with many scientists in the ipcc leadership author authorship team the only critique one can give is that IPC tends to underestimate the risks and underestimate so far the pace of change I think that is correct the ipcc should
Be the floor we all can agree on but but we should recognize that so far at least it has been underestimating risks and therefore these conclusions are really important this part here I find to be really significant For the First Time The ipcc recognizes also in his conclusions that it’s not enough to
Phase out Energy System or phase out fossil fuels we also need to safeguard up to 50% of intact nature to keep the resilience in the planet intact that happens to be exactly the number in the planet boundary science we published in 2009 so 15 years later the ipcc is on I
Mean that’s it just it just shows that that we’re we’re getting a better better integrated understanding of the challenges we’re facing we need to become stewards of the entire planet and and that’s the conclusion that science has today and I’ll just give you a little rundown on Paleo climate on that
I got this uh from um my friend Mark massin a really nice reminder of you don’t need so much evidence to come to that conclusion and one of them is just showing from the temperature graph uh which which I find to be very convincing and what you see
Here on the lower graph is the last 70 years of temperature rise this is the graph that climate Skeptics love to kind of play with to find that ah isn’t there some slowing down of temperature or it isn’t you know it’s been varying forever but I think it’s quite useful to Simply
Take the latest science and let that play out in terms of how the temperature has changed over the past 500 years and take it all the way back to the last thousand years or why not all the way back to 2,000 years and you see that there’s undoubtedly something very
Bizarre happening on planet Earth and that this is something that’s very difficult to question so I think this is something that we as scientists also have a responsibility and that’s why I think what what you’re doing here at the sankin back is is so important because looking back at the journey that we’ve
Followed and this is you know you recognize this this is 400,000 years back it is half of the period of the ice core data we have for the past 1 million years so you have four ice ages four warm interglacials until we leave the last ice age some 16,000 years ago and
Then entering this extraordinarily stable Holocene phase the last 12,000 years and the little circle you see there is this extraordinary moment the Neolithic Revolution what I would argue to be not only the most important invention of all time as modern humans on planet Earth but also the starting point of civilizations as
We know it that’s the moment when we transition from being modern humans on planet Earth for 250,000 years we’ve been there for two ice ages two interglacials and we leave the last ice age being hunters and gatherers a few million people on planet Earth and what
We do is we go through the Neolithic Revolution very early in the Hol scene and we do this simultaneously domesticating animals and plants across essentially all continents on planet Earth I would argue today that there’s a lot of empirical evidence to support that the reason why we do this is that
The planet settles down in this extraordinarily stable harmonious State the Holocene stability is extraordinary it’s can you imagine it’s a 14° c Planet plus minus 0.5 plus – 0.5 so we are already outside of the Holocene range at 1.2 de C beyond that 14° point so spray spring summer
Autumn winter rainy Seasons temperatures become predictable year after year after year which gives the hunters and gatherers our ancest ancestors this um incentive to invest in planting seeds domesticating animals and becoming sedentary communities which is the takeoff point and of course the data with regard to the holos scene is
Extraordinary today we have so much evidence this is the osal paper from 201 21 The Meta analysis of all the ice core analysis we have and just show you just just look at that stability of the Hol scene this 14 plusus 0.5 planet and and just just to say that you know uh
Climate Skeptics love to uh uh make the point that um you know we had the the little ice age in the 1200s when the Vikings supposedly were sailing across the Atlantic and finding grape vines on greenlands South uh South coasts we had in my part of the planet King called the
10th Gustav who took the Army and invaded Denmark in the mid 1600s during the little ice age when it could walk over uh the entrance to the Baltic Sea thanks to the little ice age well yes these these very big variations occurred within plusus
0.5 so so 0.5 is a big number we’ve had big big changes in Regional climates it’s not surprising that we at 1.2 start having big changes but the key Insight from this analysis in my view is not only the stability of the holos scene which by the way is a Cornerstone the
Planet boundary science because we use the Holocene as the reference point when we try to quantify the safe boundaries oh no but the the absolute fundamental Insight from this that took us to the planet boundary science is the is to try and answer the question why why did the
Planet stay so stable well the understanding we have today is that it is not thanks to some slowdown in the external forcings it is the combination of external forcings with Earth resilience and we have a lot of data on that today and I’ve just provide you two
Of the of the more convincing elements of this the left side is the carbon Global carbon project that releases each year the global carbon cycle actually they just now will be releasing it very soon for cop 28 on the x-axis you have 1850 until today you have gigatons of
Carbon on the Y AIS and above the zero line you have the Hwy stick we all know burning fossil fuels and great in Orange you have deforestation carbon from from changing ecosystems is it all of this that has caused 1.2 degre CSUS of warming so far the answer is no because
You have the numbers I gave you earlier the dark green is the uptake of carbon in the ocean the light green is the uptake in intact nature so it’s only the blue part which has caused the warming so far now this is proof because if you
Look at the graph the more we stress the system the more the planet is helping us this is a healthy Planet applying its bi geophysical systems to buffer stress and quite interestingly I mean even a Kindergarten kid would say that’s an interesting pattern the more we punch
Her the more she helps us and that that’s exactly the outcome it’s roughly 50% per year over the last 150 years what I call the biggest subsidy to the World economy but that’s not enough on the right hand side you have an even larger subsidy and and kind of hiding
Our climate debt under the carpet because this is the temperature in the ocean just look at how the ocean is absorbing heat actually 93% ipcc number of the heat caused by our fossil fuel burning is not in the atmosphere it’s in the ocean it’s not surprising that we get human Amplified
In Lino events and so this is a planet that under healthy conditions does everything it can to stay in a Holocene equilibrium state it does not want to be pushed out of that state that is what we have experienced over this past 150 years the Dilemma is we’re starting to
See more and more scientific evidence that we’re seeing cracks in this ability I could go through a long long list of papers here are just a few of them showing that in the Amazon the Brazilian part of the Amazon forest in a in a synthesis over the past 10 years
Uh shows that the the Brazilian part of the Amazon has already tipped over from being a sink to now being a source and this is really really serious because this is planet Earth’s largest and richest terrestrial ecosystem which is no longer helping us according to this latest assessment now this is not kind
Of knocking over the planet yet but it’s a warning sign it’s a warning sign which we have to take very seriously and that takes me to 1.5° C what is that that the Paris agreement has has set that as as the you know the legally binding text
Says stay well below two and aim for 1.5 well I would argue today that scientifically well below two means 1.5 and that is based on the latest science on what uh what exceeding 1.5 could mean we published a paper in the after the ipcc on the latest mapping of
The typ Point systems on planet Earth the ipcc has already a list of this look at table 4.10 in the working group one report has the 16 tipping element systems but they don’t have any quantifications it’s only qualitative assessments of low to medium confidence of risk levels on these tipping points
We have mapped them for the first time according to very very harsh conservative criteria and the Breakthrough are the color schemes here the color scheme shows for the first time scanning off the scientific literature tempure when is it likely that at what temperature range are we likely to cross their tipping points
Crossing a Tipping Point by the way means that you push the system across a very defined physical line we don’t know exactly where it is so we have a broad uncertainty range here but cross it beyond that line and the system shifts feedbacks from a dominant feedback that
Keeps it in one state and pushes it to another state so all of these systems have evidence of multiple stable States and push them too far and they will shift okay now the dark red ones the ones that come up right there are the five that we assess in this work and
I’ll show them more in scientific terms here here you have the red Embers uncertainty ranges in red darker the red the higher the likelihood furthest to the left you have the five that I’ve just mentioned that are likely to cross their tipping points already at 1.5° C
Now among those five you have the green ice sheet the West Antarctic ice sheet all all the tropical core Reef systems livelihoods by the way to at least 300 million people abrupt thawing of permafrost in the Arctic and the baron seis so these are five big systems that
I call at least this is not agreed upon in illegal terms but what I call at least Global Commons we all depend on them just those two green those two ice sheets is 10 me to sea level rise of course it wouldn’t just come as some
Kind of tsunami event the the the day after we’ve crossed 1.5 it may take thousand years before they melt but it would be unstoppable it would be irreversible I would argue that we don’t have the we have the moral responsibility to not cross such commitment levels so this is the 1.5° C
Line and in my view this graph alone provides a scientific evidence that well below two means 1.5 1.5 is not a goal it’s not a Target it’s a limit it’s a boundary it’s something we have to take very seriously and as I told you earlier it’s well beyond it’s actually a factor
Three outside the warmest temperature we’ve experienced in the Hol scene so it’s quite serious these are big big numbers there you have the five and I just want to tell you quickly the story of this one this is the Amazon rainforest and as you see the climate
Science shows that the range of risk is very high it’s in the order of between 2 and 6° C A Very unsatisfactory uncertainty range and very high up in temperature I met um a few weeks back well it’s month back now at the New York climate week with Carlos
Noras who is um I would say undoubtedly Brazil’s leading climate and ecologist uh formerly head of of Impe in Brazil Who together with Thomas Lovejoy Tom Lovejoy dear friend and colleague probably colleague also with senen of the years who passed away a few years back one of the leading Amazon
Ecologists they argue quite strongly that we are wrong the the range cannot be between 2 and 6° C of climate forcing which would cause cuse drought and fire in the system because they conclude that the system would tip over from a rainforest to a Savanah system well
Before that if you lose 25% or 20 to 25% of the forest cover that that you have an ecological Tipping Point at risk and the big question is that nobody has an answer to is what happens when these two interact what is the the the danger spot in terms of temperature and
Deforestation if we say 2 to six on temperature and 20 to 25% of deforestation when when I discussed this with Carlos um he says well very likely 1.5 and 20 may be actually a risk Zone losing 20% forest and reaching 1.5 warming because of the com combined effect which we do not know
Scientifically what the impacts are but we know we are at 17% of deforestation so we’re coming very close to that Forest Point and we’re coming very close to the temperature Point here’s the list from the ipcc on uh the typ points here is this list I showed of of the
Qualitative statements this is um by the way just to hammer home the the the scientific evolution of the ipcc this is five ipcc assessments showing the risk of Crossing tipping points 20 years ago in the third assessment the risk of Crossing tipping points was assessed to
Be somewhere up at 6 Dees the red point there it was basically a zero risk nobody was suggesting that we could reach 6 degrees of warming so therefore it was basically not existent in that assessment but look at the trajectory how we now in the six assessment are saying in the ipcc that
Come into the bracket 1.5 to2 and you go from moderate to high risk somewhere in between that range for tipping points that is the scientific state of knowledge and we have so many papers uh The poam Institute is working on this basically around the clock on um accelerated throwing in the permafrost
And the modeling this is Nicholas Bar’s paper on the Slowdown of the amok The Gulfstream system in the North Atlantic a big debate with huge uncertainties we have very important discussions between the max plank Institute in hurg uh with the colleagues at the Pam Institute but we are in agreement that there’s a
Slowdown of The Gulfstream system but we don’t know how much pressure it can continue to cope with same with the Arctic we do not know how far we can push the system but it’s changing very very fast this year is a record year in loss of uh Coral bleaching outside of
Florida we haven’t yet got the reports from the global uh the great Bayer Reef but we are very close contact with um Terry Huges who leads that assessment from the James Cook University uh we’re doing quite a lot of research today well outside of the ipcc still on interconnections between tipping points
I think this is quite important to recognize that here you have the the nine Tipping Point systems that are that are showing signs of inst ability but we’re also finding more and more scientific evidence that they are some of them are interconnected and one of the most important stories that is I
Think it’s important that we all recognize is the following that when the green and ice sheet melts very rapidly as you know the Arctic is actually warming three times faster than the planet as a whole so we have a 3° Celsius warming in the Arctic the green is melting fast releasing cold fresh
Water into North Atlantic this we know slows down the amok we slow down the amok meaning the overturning of heat in the North Atlantic it’s very basic because it’s a thermodynamic engine it runs on the salinity and temperature gradient warm salt water flows from the Southern Ocean on the surface up to
Through the Gul stream up to the southern tip of Greenland releases heat to the atmosphere making it possible to live in my corner of the planet up in the nordics that heavy water then sinks the saline heavy water and then it flows back in the bottom and the whole thing
Turns around the problem is that when green ice sheet releases its fresh water it dilutes the salt water so it’s not as heavy anymore so it sinks much slower and because of that the whole engine slows down it has slowed down by 15% that is in agreement everyone agrees
The question is how long can that be tolerated how long can that be pushed but what we also increasingly see is that when that slows down it pushes the monsoon system further to the South which can explain when we get more forest fires and droughts over the
Amazon tipping element but not only that it of course means that more warm water gets stuck in the Southern Ocean which can potentially explain why the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than expected so we seem to have a connection today between the North Pole and the South Pole via these Tipping
Point elements and we published this in the latest tenue insights in climate science that goes into the climate negotiation so we’re trying to really Bridge science with policy I also want to put you you through um so I’m I did excuse myself in the beginning and I
Hope you recognize that because you see I’m I’m really loading you with the assessments here of of that but I really need to I think it’s important that we all are aware of the state of Science and and now I come to the final part and
Then I’ll go into what it means in terms of the being stewards of the planet because 1.5 is a debated not not so much more debated on whether it’s important or not but what is debated is can we still achieve it and this it’s not published yet but we have a lot of
Discussions within the poam institute on this and our conclusion goes as follows we today shut the door on the so-called C1 scenarios the 100 or so climate scenarios in the ipcc that takes us directly to 1.5 we do not think that is possible anymore the carbon budget is
Too small so the best chance we have is the C2 family of scenarios which has overshoot so it has a period of overshoot it recognizes that we need to decarbonize uh by 2040 as I mentioned earlier but it has overshoot and here you have the C2
Scenarios all of them they have at best 30 40 Years of overshoot Beyond 1.5 reaching something like 0.1 to 0.3 de C of temperatures above 1.5 what this and then we can come back to 1.5 by the end of this Century now what this means if we are right if the ipcc is
Right is that we should prepare ourselves for some really jumpy decades ahead that’s that’s message number one even at best we should be prepared that we have a gauntlet in front of us because if 2023 was rough at touching at 1.5 you can just imagine how it will be
40 years every year being between 1.5 and 1.8 so that’s message number one but message number two is how do we come back why do we come back how do we come back well I can tell you you the reason we come back the only reason we come
Back is if we can keep the biodiversity intact on planet Earth if we can keep nature in functioning we have to come back within the planet boundaries if we continue losing that resilience it’s unlikely that we come back then then we may come up to that overshoot point and just continue
Drifting away from potentially even higher temperatures now is this something to be concerned about and this is the only slide I’ll I’ll give you on on on security issues or impacts on on people which is that we have more and more evidence that yes it does matter it
Does matter not only for human well-being it also matters for the stability of societies in the world and to me this is the most powerful science with regards to security we have today this is theile paper uh overlaying in color the stability of nations in economic terms darker the red more
Fragile economies the dark spots there are the only spots in the world that today have average temperatures that exceed the health threshold so health and lifethreatening temperatures exceeding an average level of 29° C so it’s a purely medical uh threshold not surprisingly it’s only in the Sahara
Desert that we have that kind of uh life-threatening temperature levels today the dash lines are the regions that will have exceeded this threshold in 50 years time if we continue the path we’re on today and just look at the map the overlay of fragility and and heal lifethreatening temperatures in Brazil
West Africa Horn of Africa Middle East look at India the world’s most populated country entirely basically embedded in in in kind of heat that is beyond what health scientists say is is uh is possible to cope with so I hope this kind of convinces you we we need
Something that can guide us in a transition towards a sustainable future the planet boundaries try to offer that by integrating all this evidence that I’ve been showing you it does today after 15 years of science land in the conclusion that we have nine planetary boundary systems if we can be stewards
Of these nine we have a good chance of keeping the planet within a resilient state which remains in a Hollow Scene uh within a Hollow Scene range it’s not only climate but it’s also the the what I call the biosphere boundaries of biodiversity fresh water land systems which is the configuration of ecosystem
And the two sister Cycles to carbon namely nitrogen and phosphorus the big biogeochemical cycles but not surprisingly it’s of course a stable ocean it is air pollutants aerol loading it’s the stratospheric ozone layer and finally novel entities chemical pollution there’s been so much work on this over 2,000 peer viwed papers has
Been criticizing and working and updating and quantifying the work I show this graph because a lot of work has been Advanced on fresh water over the past past two three years in the Water Resource community and we published just a month back the third scientific update on the planetary boundaries work so here
You have the the spider diagram that we have been using since the very start it’s a breakthrough because For the First time we’re able to quantify all the nine boundaries so the safe operating space is shown in green the safe operating space gives us a high likelihood of keeping the planet in a
Healthy state that can support Humanity in the future the conclusion is unfortunately that six of the nine boundaries are assessed to be outside of that range we’re using the ipcc red Embers range so the darker the red the higher is the risk it doesn’t mean that
We’ve lost it it just says that in your when you’re in yellow orange you’re in the uncertainty range in science but the darker red is that we have higher degree of evidence that we are in a danger zone there things can start going wrong it’s
Not only on climate but as you see the biosphere boundaries are are equally in a danger zone that that’s what I started with and this is my big worry we’re in the climate crisis but we’re losing the resilience in the living biosphere and we have the evidence on that on
Biodiversity on fresh water on land and on nutrients so that is why we need to turn back we’ve been advancing this science since 2009 I just show this graph to show that when we published the first time in 2009 only three of the nine boundaries were
Outside in 2015 four and now we assessed that nine a six and and all those that were outside of the safe space in 2015 are deeper into the red today so we’ have not yet bent the curve this is um a real concern so we have taken um done
What what I think we can in the scientific Community for this so in the in the New York climate week this year we launched what is called the planetary Guardians you may have heard of the elders this is an initiative of having voices former heads of state Nelson
Mandela chaired the first Elders group to to be supporting efforts of of peaceful developments in Conflict areas in the world we’re now establishing the elders for the planet the the Guardians to be voices for planetary stewardship and they will be informed by science the chair of the Guardians is Mary Robinson
The former prime minister of Ireland and then we have fantastic Guardians like Hindu ibraim uh but alsoas of the fiday of future and my favorite Peter Gabriel for example so it’s a it’s a it’s a very nice mix of of different walks of life and we will now
We’ve promised do the update of the planetary boundary science every year we want to do a planetary boundary health check every year and work with big data Earth system observation providers and Earth system modelers to really get the measurement of the planet not every seventh year as we’ve been doing so far
But to do it every every every year and here you have I just showed this because this is the the more kind of animated variant of the previous graph that we presented in in New York I can jump this because this is just showing that we’re doing a lot of modeling work between
Land and climate so that’s kind of a a bit of a technical issue I want to just close by saying that we’ve also launched the Earth commission which was established three years ago as an effort of getting the scientific Community to really do assessment of the planetary
Boundary science and bring on board the social sciences to Define not only safe boundaries but also just boundaries and the Earth commission started off with five of the planetary boundaries so climate biodiversity air pollution fresh water and nutrients and the result of that not surprising actually but really
Important that is scientifically now on the table is that if you look at the at the green ring here with the red slices these are the the safe boundary definitions so this is what I went through with you before on the safe operating space the blue lines there is
Where the social sciences when they ass assess what’s the maximum acceptable levels of significant harm to people that they conclude that the actual space the safe space shrinks even more if we really care about people so the planetary boundaries cares only about the planet but we kind of depend on the
Planet but it’s it’s really just caring about the planets and its stability but if you care for people then the social sciences tells us that already at 1 degree celsius we will have so many people affected and so many livelihoods impacted that that’s a just boundary on air pollution not surprisingly the
Planet can tolerate more air pollution than we people can do we die prematurely of air pollutants earlier than we knock over the monsoon system because of instability this is a really important first time we’ve been able to quantify safe and just boundaries the planty Guardians as I said will now be doing
The planty boundary health check each year we’re doing that across many science areas and and um we are welcoming any inputs and collaborations around this both in terms of doing a health check but we also want to be able to um explore this part which I have not
Talked about at all in this talk which is what are the pathways towards a safe landing how can we have safe and just Pathways for Humanity into the future and I would say that we we are not in a hopeless State and I won’t go through all the Innovation areas but you know
The Paris agreement is there is legally binding and we have at least on paper a pathway forward I think the cop 15 on biodiversity the kuning Montreal cop was also a breakthrough it gave us the 1.5 de CSUS equivalent for biodiversity of halting and reversing biodiversity loss
By 2030 with a quite clear understanding that we need a nature positive trajectory it won’t be enough just to reduce loss of nature we have to rebuild very significant parts of nature to have have that resilience for the future and this is now increasingly a very open discussion between climate and
Biodiversity and development and I think that’s a very positive development so I just leave you with this final slide that I think what we need to start doing is reconfiguring our Paradigm think about sustainability human well-being and Equity at the local scale yes but recognize that we’re so deep into the
Anthropos scine that we now need to connect with the planet we need to think about ourselves in terms of the stability of the planet and I’ve just done that animated here by putting the sustainable development goals inside the safe operating space to me that’s the new definition of sustainable
Development prosperity and Equity within a stable and resilient planet that this is we’ve reached that point we now have to take care of the whole system and can we do it well there is a lot of evidence that we have so much progress and possibilities of doing a transition
Actually it’s even so that just the last 10 years for the first time we can say we’re facing existential risks yes but at the same time we have scalable solutions that not only can solve significant parts of these problems the outcomes are actually more beneficial in terms of health security economies job
But also in terms of stability in societies that’s quite exciting but we’re still I would argue you know going often even two step forwards one step back but sometimes even one step forward and two steps back we’re kind of wobbling right at the top there and it’s
A very decisive moment to see in what direction we will go in the coming years and the situation is uh is quite dire but still the light is open for a transition thanks for your [Applause] patience