Humanity has thrived thanks to Earth’s stability and resilience, but what happens when we push our planet beyond its limits? 🌍
Inspired by the first-ever ‘Planetary Health Check Report‘, launched during the New York Climate Week by Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and the Planetary Guardians, this post dives into the urgent reality: we’re crossing dangerous thresholds, and the impacts could be irreversible. From climate change to biodiversity loss, the warning signs are clear—Earth’s life-support systems are weakening. But it’s not too late to act!
Explore why now, more than ever, we need to become true stewards of the planet we call home.
Humanity’s journey on Earth
For the last 2.6 million years, Earth has cycled through warmer and colder periods, primarily driven by changes in its orbit around the sun (known as Milankovitch cycles). Humanity’s journey has been shaped by these cycles, with the Holocene epoch, which started about 11.700 years ago, providing the climatic stability and favourable environmental conditions that allowed humanity to thrive.
The Holocene’s gift of four distinct, predictable seasons enabled our ancestors to shift from nomadic lifestyles to settled agriculture and rapidly develop societies. Humanity continues to rely on this stability today.

We rely on the mild, moderately wet world of the Holocene, with its permanent icecaps, flowing rivers, a cloak of forests, and abundant life. The Earth system, with all its life-supporting functions and self-regulating processes, has maintained these conditions. However, in recent decades, human activities have intensified, potentially pushing the planet beyond its capacity to remain stable, resilient and functioning.
Without human pressures, this stability could last another 50.000 years before Earth naturally moves toward the next glacial period. Now, however, we are destabilising the very systems that have sustained us for thousands of years and are moving away from the safety of the Holocene …

The boundaries of our planet
At the start of this century, scientists began exploring which Earth system processes have kept our planet stable for millennia. This work led to the development of the ‘Planetary Boundaries Framework’, describing the nine crucial processes that keep Earth resilient, stable and functioning (2009, 2015 and 2023 studies). For each process, they set safe boundaries to define the range in which humanity can safely operate without causing irreversible environmental harm.
The new ‘Planetary Health Check Report‘ compares these boundaries to vital health indicators in the human body, like blood pressure or iron levels. Just as we monitor these to prevent serious health problems, Planetary Boundaries help us understand how much we can push Earth’s systems without risking severe crises, helping us prevent irreversible damage. Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of catastrophic environmental impacts, much like high blood pressure raises the risk of a heart attack.
For too long, we have assumed the Holocene’s stability was permanent, but it is not. Earth’s resilience is now at risk. With 6 out of 9 Planetary Boundaries crossed and 7 under increasing pressure, the Planetary Health Check reveals that Earth’s vital support systems are weakening, leading to serious and often unpredictable environmental challenges. The complex interactions within Earth’s systems mean that addressing issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, or pollution in isolation is not enough.
Since local actions have global impacts and a planet under pressure affects us all, the report calls for a whole-Earth approach where protecting the planet takes centre stage. To secure well-being, stable societies, and economic development, we must prioritise Earth’s stability, resilience, and life-support functions. Just as we take care of our health, we must act now to reduce the pressure on our planet and ensure a safe and healthy future for all.

Early warning signals
As we push beyond Planetary Boundaries, Earth’s systems show clear signs of losing resilience. Since these systems are interconnected, destabilising one process — whether through increased CO₂ emissions or deforestation — can disrupt others and even trigger tipping points, leading to cascading effects across the entire Earth system with potentially irreversible impacts.
For example, as atmospheric CO₂ reaches levels not seen in 15 million years (!!) and global temperatures rise, we also see rapid biodiversity loss and weakening of critical climate-regulating ecosystems. Human activities, combined with climate impacts like extreme heat, prolonged droughts and wildfires, push ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest to a critical threshold. If crossed, this could result in rapid forest dieback, leading not only to massive biodiversity loss and accelerated warming but also to the collapse of systems that regulate global carbon and water cycles. It’s not just the Amazon; many critical ecosystems are showing similar signs, and even the AMOC shows signs of possible collapse, which could drastically alter global climate patterns.
Warning signs are everywhere: extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, ecosystems are shifting from carbon sinks to sources, nutrient disruptions are creating ocean dead zones and degrading soil health, and water scarcity is worsening as reserves shrink and are polluted. These signals demand immediate action to restore balance and protect Earth’s life-support systems.

Food for thought
Although sometimes overshadowed by the impacts of fossil fuel use, the global food system is the most significant driver of planetary boundary transgression. It has reshaped Earth’s biosphere through centuries of land conversion and nature degradation and is responsible for substantial water withdrawals, nutrient cycle disruption due to fertiliser use, and significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alarmingly, around half of global food production currently relies on practices that violate Earth’s boundaries.
Paradoxically, the food system is often the first victim of these transgressions, as climate change, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation threaten global food security. Restoring Earth’s balance while ensuring access to nutritious food for all requires an agricultural revolution — one that protects and restores ecosystems, allocates croplands to the most productive regions, adopts land management practices that work with nature instead of against it, reduces food waste from farm to fork, and shifts toward plant-based food sources. Achieving this in a socially just way will be incredibly challenging, requiring full collaboration from all stakeholders, but it is humanity’s only safe way forward.
Earth System Stewardship
We need a better plan for our planet and everything living on it. If we want to address the climate emergency, rapid biodiversity loss, and the freshwater, nutrients and pollution crises, and at the same time solve social injustices, we must adopt a whole-earth approach and stop treating Earth systems and wellbeing as separate issues.
The transgression of Planetary Boundaries has profound consequences, and we must take this seriously. While the Earth system is remarkably resilient, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing. The time is now to become stewards of the planet we call home. We must decarbonise the energy economy, reduce our consumption of energy and resources, radically rethink our food systems and land use, restore and protect the carbon stability in ecosystems, and build sustainable cities and regenerative and distributive economies.
Let’s start the conversation today and drive the change we all need.

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Used sources for this post:
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Caesar, L., Sakschewski, B. et al. (2024). Planetary Health Check Report 2024. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.
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The new Planetary Health Check website.
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Gupta, J. et al. (2024). A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations. The Lancet Planetary Health.
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Richardson, K., Steffen, W. et al. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science Advances.
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Steffen, W. et al. (2015). The trajectory of the anthropocene: The great acceleration. Sage Journal.
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Post illustrations: Most graphs in this post are adapted (modified) from the Planetary Health Check Report 2024 | They are CC BY 4.0 licensed | The art and figures in the report are made by Globaïa. Tip: Check out their website!
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The graphs representing ‘The Great Acceleration’ are made using the: IGBP Great Acceleration data collection (Steffen, W. et al. 2015).