Brave new biosphere

What kind of biosphere do you want? Great question! And great to see it connected with beautiful prize-winning graphics at visualizing.org. But on thinking further, it seems clearer than ever that the inspiration behind this- the Planetary Boundaries concept, is going completely in the wrong direction.

I had my reservations about the original planetary boundaries work- now these graphics concern me even more. I feel so sorry that these creative young folks (I am assuming here) are basing their hopes for the future primarily on the concept of limits and thresholds.

While no one should doubt that we humans can and in some ways already have made things worse for ourselves and other life on Earth, is avoiding our mistakes the only guide to the future? Whatever happened to working towards a better future? Thinking creatively about building a better biosphere than we have now?

I can only hope that the next time I see this question it will not be about avoiding catastrophe but about embracing the biosphere we and our ancestors have created and dreaming of how to build an even better biosphere in the future!