Earth is beyond six out of nine planetary boundaries

Question

I have just found out about the articles that scientist have recently published, talking about some planetary boundaries that we have crossed.

I wasn’t really able to get the full hang of it, but I’d really like to understand the concept of these boundaries and what they are, since there are only 3 left and 2 years ago we were crossing the fourth one and now we’re passed the 6th one, and according to news it could potentially cause societal collapse.

So, what are these boundaries and what happens if we cross all 9? How do they affect our society?

Edit:
The article I am on about is found [here](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458)

In: 1826

Answer 1

The planetary boundaries idea is a framework from a group of around 30 scientists in 2009:

>The authors of this framework was a group of Earth System and environmental scientists in 2009 led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University. They collaborated with 26 leading academics, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies climate scientist James Hansen, oceanographer Katherine Richardson, geographer Diana Liverman and the German Chancellor’s chief climate adviser Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.

According to this framework going outside of the boundaries may cause environmental problems:

>The planetary boundaries framework proposes a range of values for its control variables. This range is supposed to span the threshold between a ‘safe operating space’ where Holocene-like dynamics can be maintained and a highly uncertain, poorly predictable world where Earth system changes likely increase risks to societies. The boundary is defined as the lower end of that range. If the boundaries are persistently crossed, the world goes further into a danger zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries

Whether these problems manifest and how bad they are is still up in the air. Some people are skeptical since there is no shortage of doomer [environmental predictions that never came true.](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-were-made-around-the-time-of-the-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year/)