What does T-rex have to do with sustainable homes?
Understanding that there is science behind the reasons we need to adapt and change.
Status quo and precedence are for the Holocene. The Anthropocene means disruptions and uncertainties. We have to start doing things differently to allow for maximum adaptation, the future will be a crash course in resilience.
Hold on to your panties, shits going to get rough, and this climate driven shit storm will not be distributed equally. The privileged will continue to be buffered whilst the poor and disadvantaged bear the brunt of the social, economic and environmental changes that are coming at us. Change is coming fast, dressed up as extreme climate events, that will impact both human and natural systems.
OR we avoid the worst of what's coming and choose to be part of changing the course. Our actions now, even at an individual level, can create a better 22nd century for all. And if history is anything to go by, in the face of change we invariably adapt.
Before I link the basics of climate science to your humble home there is some simple science based earth history that we need to discuss first, and if, like me, you paid little to no attention to history, science and everything else that wasn’t physical education at school I will keep it simple.
The period after the dinosaurs froze their butts off and allowed for Homo sapiens to evolve is called the Holocene. This period was dominated by stable conditions that were perfect for humans to evolve from cave peeps to the assortment of people that we see spread across the global today.
However those stable conditions (carbon in the atmosphere, ice stored across the globe, increasing biodiversity - the list is extensive) are under threat and when these the conditions start changing significantly, it means that the environmental conditions that continued human existence physically requires are no longer stable. These changes are expressed as extreme climate events and in 2023 there is no country that hasn't experienced an extreme climate event.
For over three decades we have been told by scientists, that earths systems (which are responsible for the management of the life sustaining conditions) are changing and there is growing evidence that these changes are caused by human activity.
Enter the Anthropocene, the proposed period in which the earth has entered. This period is defined by the significant changes that are occurring to earth's systems, change caused by human activity.
So how do we know about these changes? Steffen et al (2009)1 identified 9 key systems known as planetary boundaries. Each system plays a significant role in keeping the earth's conditions stable, but, and more importantly, the functionality of the these systems is interdependent. By tracking these boundaries against their calculated capacities we are able to see how close we are from destabilising the planet's systems and therefore, those pesky life sustaining conditions.
These planetary boundaries are constantly re-evaluated to include the latest research and data for measuring just how close we are to irreparably destabilising the environmental conditions that have allowed human life to flourish.
In my next post I will start to introduce the planetary boundaries and how your home affects these integral earth systems.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html