From what I read before feeling like I’d seen enough to make a casual comment on lemmy about it, apparently the deficit they calculate is largely measured in greenhouse gas emissions. As I understand it they estimate the amount of additional biologically productive land (average unspoiled forest/ocean or whatever) that would be required to absorb all the carbon dioxide we’re emitting. This makes some sense since biological productivity is often measured in terms of carbon. But it suggests, as some critics have pointed out, that perhaps they leave out too many other important things. Soil erosion, water use, phosphorous, other resources and pollutants, and environmental degredation in general are not so easy to add up. Calling it a “budget” also suggests that it would be okay if we used 100% of it, whatever it is. We’re using many times more in energy than we could ever extract from biological sources, which is one reason why “biofuels” are not the answer. We cannot in reality appropriate the entire net primary productivity of the planet to human ends.
So it seems unlikely due to that, but also due to my own intuition about how things are. Here’s a handy infographic. It’s interesting that they put “CO2 concentration” at roughly the same distance beyond the bounds of what’s safe as this “yearly resource budget” puts all resource use. But you can see at a glance that it isn’t the only problem we face. It’s not so easy to sum things up in one simple number, and you’ll get wildly different answers depending on how you do it.
From what I read before feeling like I’d seen enough to make a casual comment on lemmy about it, apparently the deficit they calculate is largely measured in greenhouse gas emissions. As I understand it they estimate the amount of additional biologically productive land (average unspoiled forest/ocean or whatever) that would be required to absorb all the carbon dioxide we’re emitting. This makes some sense since biological productivity is often measured in terms of carbon. But it suggests, as some critics have pointed out, that perhaps they leave out too many other important things. Soil erosion, water use, phosphorous, other resources and pollutants, and environmental degredation in general are not so easy to add up. Calling it a “budget” also suggests that it would be okay if we used 100% of it, whatever it is. We’re using many times more in energy than we could ever extract from biological sources, which is one reason why “biofuels” are not the answer. We cannot in reality appropriate the entire net primary productivity of the planet to human ends.
So it seems unlikely due to that, but also due to my own intuition about how things are. Here’s a handy infographic. It’s interesting that they put “CO2 concentration” at roughly the same distance beyond the bounds of what’s safe as this “yearly resource budget” puts all resource use. But you can see at a glance that it isn’t the only problem we face. It’s not so easy to sum things up in one simple number, and you’ll get wildly different answers depending on how you do it.
Thank you very much for the detailed response and the further reading. My apologies for being a bit sassy in my earlier reply.