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A new study explores three potential future scenarios and finds that, under current trends and policies, the situation is projected to worsen across all planetary boundaries by 2050, except for ozone depletion. But targeted interventions and ambitious policy measures can reduce the negative effects and steer humanity toward more sustainable futures.
The new study, recently published in Nature, includes Centre researchers Sarah Cornell and Johan Rockström as co-authors, alongside researchers from several Dutch environmental institutes and agencies."Human civilisation has reached a critical juncture, and using a novel methodology, we show how it can continue to develop without ruining its natural foundations," says Johan Rockström, who is also the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "This is the most comprehensive coupling so far of the framework of planetary boundaries to data from model-based future scenarios." The authors used an Integrated Assessment Model to make projections for 2030 and 2050 for eight out of nine planetary boundaries, based on three different scenarios. While two scenarios showed bleak results, the third showed that with timely action, negative trends can be reversed. The encouraging news is that interventions - such as implementing the Paris Climate Agreement, adopting healthier diets, and improving the efficiency of food, water, and nutrient use - can significantly reduce planetary boundary overshoot. These actions can steer humanity toward a more sustainable trajectory, provided they are implemented in ways that are socially and institutionally feasible. "We can clearly quantify the danger of business as usual, while showing that ambitious change pays off", says Johan Rockström.
Three scenarios, one positive outcome......The scenarios used were based on three of the "Shared Socioeconomic Pathways" (SSP) scenarios from the IPPC's Sixth Assessment Report, with additional policy assumptions. SSP 2, assuming no major shift in current societal trends - that is, business-as-usual - was used as a baseline. It showed further degradation for nearly all indicators for the 2030 and 2050 projections......https://www.- Details
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"We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish"Dezeen Pooran Desai | 3 January 2025 A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it we must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai."We have two years to save the world." So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months – more than a third of the way – into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish. "Reimagine".......... Take this option and by 2050 we'll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion. We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points We will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities. We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerated one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state. The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero. They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice. Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.
The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple. The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis. Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science Architects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining. In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed the idea that our planet is the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together. In medicine, contradicting all reductionist hopes, we now know that genes predict only 5-10 per cent of disease at most, and that the whole planet. https://www.dezeen.com/2025/
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"We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish"Dezeen Pooran Desai | 3 January 2025 A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it designers must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai."We have two years to save the world." So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months – more than a third of the way – into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish. "Reimagine".......... Take this option and by 2050 we'll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion. We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points We will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities.
We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerated one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state. The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero. They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice. Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.
The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple. The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis.
Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science Architects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining. In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed the idea that our planet is the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together. https://www.dezeen.com/2025/
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Mammoth Carbon Capture: World’s Largest Air Pollution Vacuum Launches in Iceland. Scientists unveil the Mammoth carbon capture plant using innovative direct air capture methods to remove thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Happy Eco News. Joe Verde Thu 6 Mar 2025 A revolutionary carbon removal plant named “Mammoth” be gan operations in Iceland in May 2024, marking a significant milestone in the fight against climate change. The facility, developed by Swiss company Climeworks, represents the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) technology designed to extract planet-heating pollution from the atmosphere. Located in Hellisheidi, Iceland, the Mammoth carbon capture plant is designed with an ambitious nameplate capacity to remove up to 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. This impressive facility represents a ten-fold increase from its predecessor, Orca, and marks a critical step in Climeworks’ strategic roadmap to address global carbon emissions. The plant’s development showcases remarkable engineering efficiency. Breaking ground in June 2022, Climeworks completed 90% of the plant’s infrastructure in just 18 months.
The company’s modular technology design allows for flexible construction and scalability, enabling rapid deployment of carbon capture technologies. The plant utilizes a sophisticated modular design featuring 72 potential “collector containers” that capture carbon directly from the air. Multiple containers are currently operational, and plans are to expand in the coming months. These advanced machines use specialized chemical processes to strip carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with unprecedented efficiency. The Mammoth carbon capture facility is powered entirely by Iceland’s clean geothermal energy and represents a cutting-edge approach to addressing global climate challenges. Through a partnership with Icelandic company Carbfix, the captured carbon will be transported underground and transformed into stone, permanently sequestering the harmful greenhouse gas.
The global scientific community has long sought effective solutions to mitigate climate change. The Mammoth carbon capture plant’s technology is a promising breakthrough, offering a proactive approach to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Unlike traditional methods focusing solely on emissions reduction, this technology actively removes carbon from the air. Economic and environmental experts continue to debate the long-term viability of direct air capture technologies. While promising, these solutions require significant investment and technological innovation. Climeworks addresses these challenges through a strategic approach that combines cutting-edge research with practical implementation. The technological complexity of the mammoth carbon capture plant is genuinely remarkable. Advanced chemical engineering enables the precise extraction of carbon dioxide molecules from the atmosphere. Specialized filters and intricate chemical reactions work in concert to separate carbon from other atmospheric gases, demonstrating human ingenuity in environmental problem-solving.....read on https://happyeconews.com/
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Renewables allow us to pay less, not twice. What Kemi Badenoch, and many others, get wrong about renewables The Electrotech Revolution.Daan Walter Mar 25, 2025
Last week, UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch took the stage to advocate for slowing the rollout of renewables, arguing that they ultimately lead to higher costs.......
Huge amounts are being spent on switching round how we distribute electricity because we must effectively build two systems of electricity generation – one based on renewables and one not. One for when the sun shines and the wind blows. And one for when they don’t.” At first glance, this argument seems intuitive—and therefore persuasive: if we need to build two separate power generation systems, it must be more expensive. But this logic is fundamentally flawed. It conflates upfront capital expenditure with total system costs, focusing narrowly on installation expenses while ignoring the costs of purchasing fuel to run fossil power plants. This is a common misunderstanding in the energy transition debate today—we call it the "double cost fallacy.” It's time we move past it.
To illustrate where this line of thinking goes wrong, let’s examine a simple, stylized example. Imagine we get granted a large plot of land and 1 GW grid connection that we need to supply with power all 8,760 hours per year, for 25 years. Our task is to find a cheap, reliable way to do this. We’ll set our scene in the south of the UK, exclude local carbon taxes to focus purely on economics, and use some standard cost assumptions for power generation technology, largely from the UK's DESNZ (detailed assumptions at the bottom of the article).[ii]As we'll see, we can supply 70% of this power with solar energy without any additional cost compared to just operating a gas plant. Interestingly—and perhaps counterintuitively—the total cost of running a 1 GW gas plant continuously is actually higher than building a combined system of 1 GW gas, 6.5 GW solar, and 12 GWh of battery storage. We will build out this case in this article—but if you want to jump ahead and play around with this hypothetical setup yourself, you can do so with this simple webtool.
The gas case......Let’s start with a baseline. We can consider just building a 1 GW gas power plant to deliver our 1 GW baseload. You’ll get the very boring result below: 100% gas generation all year round. This solution has a total cost of approximately £76/MWh. Remember that number as we’ll refer to this later as a benchmark.Note that only £8/MWh is for paying off the capex, and the other £68/MWh goes into running costs — predominantly the cost of buying gas. The latter we will try to reduce by adding in renewables now.
Adding solar on top....... So let's add some solar energy into the mix. Suppose we install an additional 1 GW of solar capacity alongside the 1 GW gas plant. You then get the result below.Contrary to what the double cost fallacy implies, total system cost actually falls when we add solar on top of gas. In our example, the system costs falls to about £70/MWh. This reduction occurs because during daylight hours we can rely on free sunshine rather than expensive gas to make electricity. As a result, gas usage drops by around 16%. As one can see from the three generation charts at the bottom, summer months are of course better than winter months for solar.
Adding more solar on top......Continuing this logic, let's double our solar capacity to 2 GW. Even if this means occasionally generating more solar power than needed, we can just throw away the excess. We get the result below.......read on https://
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