To summarize, climate crisis is the defining issue of the century. Buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere is driving global heating, while a convergence of global crises threatens to rupture key planetary boundaries beyond which organized human life on Earth would be threatened.

Before moving on to address some of the key drivers of climate crisis/acceleration towards rupture of planetary boundaries, I thought it would be worthwhile to briefly reflect upon other planetary-level threats to human thriving and survival on Earth. In the post on toxic substance contamination, the threat of nuclear war – relative to fallout, radiation, and nuclear winter came up – but it’s worth pointing out again that lasting contamination aside, nuclear war itself poses an existential threat to the future of human life on Earth.

Other such threats include the possibility of an asteroid (or, in a less likely scenario, a comet) striking the Earth; an especially severe megavolcano eruption; perhaps certain types of solar phenomena; the worst pandemic in human history (with the caveat that, to date, there has obviously never been a pathogen that caused human extinction); and an invasion of hostile extraterrestrials (not a prospect over which I lose sleep). For each of the threats in this paragraph, institutional efforts are in place to monitor the risk so as, in concept, to allow for mitigatory action to be taken in advance to the extent possible; however, in practice, as the sorry state of pandemic preparedness in many countries around the world has shown (including the United States, which was ranked the nation most prepared – in 2019 by the Global Health Security Index – for a pandemic) that sometimes the appearance of preparedness is just that.

In my view, given the limited resources we possess as a species (internally divided, and in no way unitary), the sane approach to such species-level existential threats is to attempt to assess the likelihood and the extremity of each threat; based on a well-calibrated product of the two, to determine which threats pose the most imminent and plausible risk to human thriving on Earth; and to allot resources accordingly towards prevention, where possible, and preparation, where necessary. The failure to take such an approach in view of the clear and present threat of climate crisis bespeaks many of the same systemic institutional and political failures that have fueled the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and its corollaries, and the work of this decade, and well beyond, is to break through the corruption, negligence, cruelty, and indifference that underlie the failure to take climate action before it is too late.

To summarize, climate crisis is the defining issue of the century. Buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere is driving global heating, while a convergence of global crises threatens to rupture key planetary boundaries (beyond which organized human life on Earth will be threatened) including: stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, toxic substance contamination, climate change (the defining sub-category of climate crisis), ocean acidification, freshwater consumption, land system change, and disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles.

Today’s post centers aerosols. During the COVID-19 pandemic (still a thing), aerosols have been much more in the news than usual; however, while their relevance to SARS CoV-2 transmission has been front of mind of late, aerosols (which are, according to Wikipedia, “suspension[s] of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or [other] gases”) also play an important, if sometimes ambiguous, role relative to climate change. Examples of aerosols include dust, soot (sometimes also called “black carbon” in climate circles), smoke, water droplets, pollen, and ash, to name just a few. As with the anthropogenic nitrogen and phosphorous loading of the biosphere, the problem with human-caused atmospheric aerosol loading is not the presence of aerosols, per se, but the volume and character of the aerosols being released by human activity. Tomorrow, I’m going to briefly explore a few planetary threats that do not fit into the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s framework (and, like asteroid strikes, do not necessarily follow a planetary-boundaries logic), but for now, I give you the ninth and final planetary boundary as described by the SRC:

An atmospheric aerosol planetary boundary was proposed primarily because of the influence of aerosols on Earth’s climate system. Through their interaction with water vapour, aerosols play a critically important role in the hydrological cycle affecting cloud formation and global-scale and regional patterns of atmospheric circulation, such as the monsoon systems in tropical regions. They also have a direct effect on climate, by changing how much solar radiation is reflected or absorbed in the atmosphere. Humans change the aerosol loading by emitting atmospheric pollution (many pollutant gases condense into droplets and particles), and also through land-use change that increases the release of dust and smoke into the air. Shifts in climate regimes and monsoon systems have already been seen in highly polluted environments, giving a quantifiable regional measure for an aerosol boundary. A further reason for an aerosol boundary is that aerosols have adverse effects on many living organisms. Inhaling highly polluted air causes roughly 800,000 people to die prematurely each year. The toxicological and ecological effects of aerosols may thus relate to other Earth system thresholds. However, the behaviour of aerosols in the atmosphere is extremely complex, depending on their chemical composition and their geographical location and height in the atmosphere. While many relationships between aerosols, climate and ecosystems are well established, many causal links are yet to be determined.

Because the dynamics of global capitalism under neoliberalism have led to a shift of many heavy and polluting industries to countries of the Global South (many of which, like India, are in the Northern Hemisphere), residents of the United States and other rich countries who do not live in frontline communities are, today, often oblivious of the burden of air pollution or see it as a problem of “dirty,” “Third World” countries. Of course, we have profound problems with air, water, and soil contamination in the United States as well, but for residents (especially of cities) of India, China, and other countries to which much of the global manufacturing base has migrated, the crisis of air quality is existential. Again, in atmospheric aerosol loading, there is an instance where something that is harmful even at the local or regional level can, when amplified to a certain scale, become a global crisis – though, ironically, one proposed “solution” to global heating is stratospheric aerosol injection, which will be discussed in depth in a future post. Critics of this form of geoengineering via solar radiation management point out, as does the SRC above, that atmospheric aerosols can disrupt key weather patterns, such as the Asian monsoons upon which billions of people rely for either livelihoods, sustenance, or both.

No bonus piece today. Thanks for reading!

To summarize, climate crisis is the defining issue of the century. Buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere is driving global heating, while a convergence of global crises threatens to rupture key planetary boundaries (beyond which organized human life on Earth will be threatened) including: stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, toxic substance contamination, climate change (the defining sub-category of climate crisis), ocean acidification, freshwater consumption, and land system change.

Today’s post centers – in the framing of the Stockholm Resilience Center, from which the following description is drawn – “Nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans”:

The biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus have been radically changed by humans as a result of many industrial and agricultural processes. Nitrogen and phosphorus are both essential elements for plant growth, so fertilizer production and application is the main concern. Human activities now convert more atmospheric nitrogen into reactive forms than all of the Earth’s terrestrial processes combined. Much of this new reactive nitrogen is emitted to the atmosphere in various forms rather than taken up by crops. When it is rained out, it pollutes waterways and coastal zones or accumulates in the terrestrial biosphere. Similarly, a relatively small proportion of phosphorus fertilizers applied to food production systems is taken up by plants; much of the phosphorus mobilized by humans also ends up in aquatic systems. These can become oxygen-starved as bacteria consume the blooms of algae that grow in response to the high nutrient supply. A significant fraction of the applied nitrogen and phosphorus makes its way to the sea, and can push marine and aquatic systems across ecological thresholds of their own. One regional-scale example of this effect is the decline in the shrimp catch in the Gulf of Mexico’s ‘dead zone’ caused by fertilizer transported in rivers from the US Midwest.

This description largely speaks for itself. As with the emission of greenhouse gases, human (again, largely corporate) production and deployment of nitrogen- and phosphorous-containing fertilizers have become so extensive that, beyond adverse local and regional impacts, they have now altered key global “biogeochemical” balances, and are thus, in the process, threatening ecosystem stability at a planetary scale. Not only, then, does industrial agriculture (in particular, the factory farming of non-human animals for human consumption) help drive antibiotic resistance and novel zoonoses, but mechanized, corporate, fossil-fuel- and agri-chemical-dependent agriculture – disproportionately focused, in the US, on the monoculture production of wheat, corn, and soybeans in addition to the raising for slaughter of billions of cows, pigs, and chickens – is a climate, ecological, and health disaster as – to the final point – the pervasiveness of toxic substances like glyphosate and neonicotinoids in our food supplies and bodies attests.

To summarize, climate crisis is the defining issue of the century. Buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere is driving global heating, while a convergence of global crises threatens to rupture key planetary boundaries (beyond which organized human life on Earth will be threatened) including: stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, toxic substance contamination, climate change (the defining sub-category of climate crisis), ocean acidification, and freshwater consumption.

Today’s post centers “land system change” (sometimes also called land use change, or, cumbersomely – in the whimsical parlance of the technocrats – land use, land use change, and forestry, or LULUCF, which is pronounced “loo-loo-sef”) which the Stockholm Resilience Center characterizes as follows:

Land is converted to human use all over the planet. Forests, grasslands, wetlands and other vegetation types have primarily been converted to agricultural land. This land-use change is one driving force behind the serious reductions in biodiversity, and it has impacts on water flows and on the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus and other important elements. While each incident of land cover change occurs on a local scale, the aggregated impacts can have consequences for Earth system processes on a global scale. A boundary for human changes to land systems needs to reflect not just the absolute quantity of land, but also its function, quality and spatial distribution. Forests play a particularly important role in controlling the linked dynamics of land use and climate, and is the focus of the boundary for land system change.

This description does an especially good job of establishing the fundamental interconnectedness of the various planetary boundaries, as the SRC points out that land system change is not only a key driver of biodiversity loss and extinctions of non-human species (and, I’ll add, a key driving force, in tandem with corporate agribusiness, of the emergence of zoonotic and other novel pathogens), but also plays a key role in the cycles of not only carbon (and hence has a significant, and often overlooked, impact on climate change) but nitrogen and phosphorous (which latter two cycles, together, I’ll address tomorrow, and which, in turn, have a major impact on the health of marine ecosystem and oceanic nutrient balances). Additionally, certain forms of land system change are, obviously, connected with the release of toxic substances, and, on top of all of these technical factors, there’s also the spiritual and aesthetic consideration, which can be summed up, in the words of Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”

We should be working against the defeatism and regret embedded in her lyric. Today’s bonus recommendation is another short piece of mine (also published today), the title of which speaks for itself: “Public Schools in Public Parks: Reopening School Indoors Is COVID Suicide for NYC. Thankfully, We Have an Alternative.” Thanks for reading.

Ample, painful experience from around the country and the world has shown that reopening in-person, indoor schooling in settings where COVID-19 has not been fully suppressed leads, more or less inevitably, to renewed outbreaks of the disease. Political leaders of New York State and City have lately been in a triumphant mood – after the catastrophic and massively deadly spring we endured here in NYC – about our relative “success” in combating “the virus,” and yet, the fact remains that each day, still, in recent weeks, some ~200 to 400 people have been diagnosed COVID-19 positive in NYC, and the testing positive rate has remained steady since June at ~1%. This suggests to me that, at present, thousands, if not tens of thousands of people still have the disease at any given moment in the City. Unlike countries and jurisdictions that have successfully suppressed their epidemics – places where numbers like those for “successful” New York City would be cause for deep concern and renewed strict lockdown – we have adopted, if only be default and Federal malfeasance and cruelty – a strategy of “living with (so sometimes dying from) the virus” on the one hand, and waiting for a vaccine on the other. (Incidentally, this non-strategy is almost identical, in spirit, to our national approach to climate crisis: Wait and see, and count on a tech-fix, like a Hollywood deus ex machina, to eventually save us. That, or the superrich colonize Mars.)

In short, our regional success in the US Northeast is a sane and humane country’s failure, but even our limited success can turn into renewed debacle if we allow political exigency and economic distress to drive ill-informed policy choices that run counter to the obvious empirical consensus, namely that: Contagion occurs primarily indoors; risk of infection is proportional to length of exposure; aerosolized particles do build up in closed spaces and can remain contagious for hours after exhalation; teens do spread the virus, perhaps even more than do adults; contrary to some framings, not everyone in a school building is a teen (and both some teens and many teachers, administrators, and support staff are high-risk); and mixing of many people from many households is a clear way to facilitate super-spreading events and wide community spread. I could go on, but I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that reopening in-person, indoor schooling is simply not a good idea at this juncture in New York City (or really anywhere in the United States), and yet, owing to structural realities of our anti-human system in the US, immense pressure has built to reopen our public schools.

Why? Because public schools in New York City, as across the country, serve as de facto childcare for the vast majority of working parents who can’t afford to pay for private care for their children. More extensively reopening the economy is simply not feasible if public schools remain closed, so just as toxic financial incentives – that is, reliance on payment of obscenely high tuition to fund operating expenses – are driving many institutions of higher learning to reopen against all indications of science and good sense, so too, fundamental economic realities are pushing us, once again, towards disaster with respect to public schools and the central role they occupy in our society.

Who can forget that the failures of Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to close the New York City public schools in a timely fashion which stand out as the clearest signs of the lapses in leadership which cost tens of thousands of lives across the five boroughs? Or that the belated closure of the schools served as the sign that, at last, state and city elected executives were taking the pandemic sufficiently seriously?

Thankfully, there is a clear and obvious alternative to indoor schooling that allows us to cut this Gordian economic knot: Outdoor schooling. Restaurants have moved their operations outside and, while outdoor dining has not been perfect; has created a huge amount of additional work for already hard-working restaurant employees; and has put employees and patrons alike at the mercy of the weather (and employees, especially, at renewed risk of infection), it has offered an alternative, far safer than indoor dining, that has allowed some return to “normalcy” and resumption of economic activity for hard-hit and much-loved neighborhood businesses.

New York is graced with a great many public parks. Investment in and upkeep of them reflects underlying racial and class divisions in our very segregated metropolis, but the fact remains that, between public park space and ample street space – which municipal initiatives (like Open Streets and expanded outdoor dining) have shown was always available for better uses than driving and parking – New York has more than enough space to shift all of its classrooms outside. Truth be told, as someone who works with teenagers, I suspect that the vast majority of students (and probably a majority of teachers as well) would welcome the opportunity to learn and gather together outdoors, and especially against the backdrop of a deadly, still-raging pandemic, there’s little doubt in my mind that the preference of a vast majority of students, teachers, parents, and community members will be for an outdoor schooling option.

Would this require adjustments? Of course. But in what realms have we not been forced into unforeseen (and often previously unimaginable) adjustments. Perhaps school could only be in session on good weather days, which in turn would create cascading challenges for all of the working parents (and employers of them) across the region’s economy. Perhaps investments would have to be made in collapsible, portable rain tents as essential components of the outdoor classroom.

Some critics may object that winter is not that far off, but in a rare instance of climate crisis working in favor of our menaced archipelagic megacity, as New York City’s weather has tended subtropical, we’ve seen ever milder winters, and the weather has remained mild (and suitable for outdoor dining) well into November and often even into December in recent years. Is it ideal to have class outside as the temperatures get cooler? Obviously not. But would bundling up be preferable to suffering renewed, explosive community spread and returning to the brutal days of the spring, if bundling up also permitted continuation of a cautious, data-driven reopening of the regional economy? I think so.

Leaders are meant to lead, not to devolve responsibility for school reopening to all the State’s independent school districts in a massive, dangerous gesture of washing hands of the matter. Leadership here looks like recognizing the dire consequences of failure, and the absolute necessity of contextual adaptation in the face of an exceptional challenge. It’s not enough for the Governor to risk the high likelihood that reopening schools leads to renewed explosive spread of COVID-19, but to do so in a fashion that leaves him plausible deniability and allows him to blame local incompetence or misjudgment for the tragedy. We need to avert the tragedy as the Governor failed to back in the early months of this year.

In short: Reopening New York City public schools indoors is suicide and would mean a death sentence for many New Yorkers (not least, the hard-working people of the NYC Department of Education, 79 employees of which have already died from COVID-19), but thankfully, we have an alternative: Outdoor school at least through Thanksgiving. It’s not perfect, and it’s not a permanent solution, but it would buy three more months for our failed national strategy of mass death and vaccine chasing to run its course. In the meantime, perhaps we’ll get lucky and an effective and safe vaccine will emerge from trials. Or perhaps someone will come up with a better idea to get New York City through its toughest school year in decades. No matter what happens, three months of outdoor school would be three more months of averted crisis and trauma.

In the meantime, we shouldn’t follow the dead-end down which other school systems have already ventured. Outdoor schooling, or no schooling at all, but indoor school in these circumstances leads only back to the nightmare.