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    HE EARTH HAS PROBLEMS, AND WE AREN’T HELPING, NOT EVEN THOSE WHO CLAIM TO CARE.

    We humans seem to have a problem accepting the obvious. We squabble over the uncertain and ignore the undeniable. We fail to solve the things we can. Deforestation could be addressed – but it is not. Overpopulation could be addressed – but it is not. We humans prefer dramas. We prefer to fight over petty issues. We want to feel good, not do good. We don’t offer sacrifice, unless it is the sacrifice of someone else. The earth has problems, and we aren’t helping, not even those who claim to care.

    Mapping our reliance on the tropics can reveal the roots of the … – Nature.com

    Roberts, PatrickBy Earth changes No Comments7 Mins Read


    Projecting and managing the feedback between tropical deforestation and global Earth system dynamics, and identifying potential critical thresholds or tipping points, will be key to our species’ future on this planet. By understanding the major historical processes that underpin the origins of this interaction, and bringing natural and social systems together in interdisciplinary models, we can evaluate the degree to which past human impacts on tropical forests resulted in observable planetary ramifications that have left legacies for the twenty-first century and beyond.

    The Anthropocene refers to an epoch in which humans have become the dominant driver of planetary change, affecting the Earth system on varying timescales1. Human societies have even formed a new sphere of the Earth system — the ‘technosphere’ — that encompasses all human-made materials and structures2, weighs more than 30 trillion tonnes3 and is markedly altering fundamental energy flows. Anthropogenic action through this technosphere is bringing us closer to a series of tipping points that — if crossed — will irreversibly alter the state of the Earth4. Although there is a clear acceleration of human impacts on the Earth system in the mid-20th century1, research in archaeology and palaeoecology suggests that thresholds of human–Earth-system interactions may also have been traversed in the past. From the expansion of food production by 6,000 years ago to the onset of the ‘Columbian Exchange’ in ad 1492, past human societies have left an important Earth system heritage for the contemporary world5,6.

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    Fig. 1: The globally critical relationship of tropical forests to different parts of the Earth system and their sensitivity to impacts from the technosphere.
    Fig. 2: Historical thresholds of human–Earth-system change in the tropics.

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    Acknowledgements

    This work has received funding from the Max Planck Society and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (850709, PANTROPOCENE). The authors thank G. Barretto-Tesoro for her valuable comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

    Author information

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany

      Patrick Roberts, David Max Findley, Rebecca Hamilton, Victor Lery Caetano-Andrade & Noel Amano

    2. Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany

      Patrick Roberts, David Max Findley, Victor Lery Caetano-Andrade, Noel Amano & Andrea U. Kay

    3. School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

      Patrick Roberts

    4. School of Archaeology, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, the Philippines

      Patrick Roberts

    5. Department of Earth Sciences and Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

      Jed O. Kaplan

    6. School of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

      Rebecca Hamilton

    7. Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

      Jürgen Renn

    8. Structural Changes of the Technosphere, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany

      Jürgen Renn

    9. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

      Ricarda Winkelmann

    10. Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

      Ricarda Winkelmann

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    Roberts, P., Kaplan, J.O., Findley, D.M. et al. Mapping our reliance on the tropics can reveal the roots of the Anthropocene.
    Nat Ecol Evol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-01998-x

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    • Published: 23 February 2023

    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-01998-x

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