Exceeding our planetary boundaries

We have gone far past some of the boundaries within which humans can safely operate, says environmentalist Mark Lynas.

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1st October, 2011

Climate change

"Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do,” says Mark Lynas in the introduction to his new book, The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. In this self-declared “radical manifesto”, Lynas asks whether we are “rebel organisms designed to destroy the biosphere, or divine apes sent to manage it intelligently and to save it from ourselves”. On picking up the book, I first thought the idea that we’re in charge might be hard to sell to New Zealanders whose lives have been devastated by the Christchurch earthquake or who’ve suffered damage from the snowstorms, ...

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