Hello this is the bank calling

Welcome back to The Strawman, the daily climate newsletter thats like adding sugar to a bitter coffee. We’re working with bitter content today, but we’re doing what we can.

Today we’ve been reading academic articles. That’s right - we went back to school - don’t say we don’t do nothing for ya. Scientists have been sciencing - let’s dive in.

Earth in overdraft

We got some good news and some bad news.

Good news is that some scientists went ahead and did work around what boundaries we need to keep various climate measures within to keep the Earth happy.

Bad news? We’ve breached the boundary for 7 of these 8 measures.

Whoops.

Picture Earth as a giant bank. It's done an audit, and we, the humans, are terrible tenants. Not just late with the rent, but we've also been raiding the mini bar, cranking up the heat, and making a racket at all hours. I’d be hella pissed.

Making a planetary payment plan

According to these scientists, the only boundary we haven’t crossed was to do with aerosol usage. Every other boundary, including climate, biodiversity, water, natural ecosystems, land use and the effect of fertilisers was in overdraft.

Talk about deep in the doo-doo.

Like anyone struggling with debt, we need a path to pay back the piper. We’ve maxed out the credit cards, taken a loan against the house, and at this point even put our first born on the line.

But as with all debt, there’s likely a way out - it just needs us to put in the work.

Let’s go through what we need to do for each of the measures:

• Global Mean Surface Temperature - this is what most people think about with climate change. Tl;dr - shift from fossil fuels and cut down on carbon

• Altered Natural Stream Flow - to restore our rivers, we need to minimize water diversion and extraction. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow

• Groundwater Extraction - to refill Earth's underground water reserves, we need to reduce water consumption - no more hour long baths (and generally being efficient with water) is a good start here

• Keeping Natural Ecosystems Intact and maintain Semi-Natural Habitats - to keep things au natural, we should slow down on the deforestation and focus on sustainability in our built environement - think green spaces in cities to bring these two in check

• Agricultural Surplus of Nitrogen and Phosphorous - more efficiently using fertilisers, working to enrich our soil, and recycling phosphorus (e.g., from manure or human waste) will do a lot to bring the chemicals under control

Whew. That’s a lot.

I didn’t say it would be easy.

‘Til tomorrow

The Strawman