Flux continu

Human activities are threatening to push the Earth system beyond its planetary boundaries, risking catastrophic and irreversible global environmental change. Action is urgently needed, yet well-intentioned policies designed to reduce pressure on a single boundary can lead, through economic linkages, to aggravation of other pressures. In particular, the potential policy spillovers from an increase in the global carbon price onto other critical Earth system processes has received little attention to date. To this end, we explore the global environmental effects of pricing carbon, beyond its effect on carbon emissions. We find that the case for carbon pricing globally becomes even stronger in a multi-boundary world, since it can ameliorate many other planetary pressures. It does however exacerbate certain planetary pressures, largely by stimulating additional biofuel production. When carbon pricing is allied with a biofuel policy, however, it can alleviate all planetary pressures. In the light of nine Earth Syst

D Bourg rappelle ensuite certaines des composantes du défi, climatique et plus généralement écologique, auquel nous sommes confrontés. Puis, il énumère les conditions indispensables à la relève de ce défi qui en passent par l’adoption de mesures contraignantes. Ces conditions touchent des sujets aussi différents que le paysage de l’information, la latitude des pouvoirs politiques locaux, la sobriété ou la justice, etc. Il n’est pas acquis, ni impossible, que nous puissions les satisfaire. À quoi il convient d’ajouter désormais un contexte international fort peu propice à une action globale concertée, à des fins climatiques et écologiques.

Humanity has triggered the sixth mass extinction episode since the beginning of the Phanerozoic. The complexity of this extinction crisis is centred on the intersection of two complex adaptive systems: human culture and ecosystem functioning, although the significance of this intersection is not properly appreciated. Human beings are part of biodiversity and elements in a global ecosystem.

Anthropogenic activities are increasingly affecting ecosystems across the globe. Meanwhile, empirical and theoretical evidence suggest that natural systems can exhibit abrupt collapses in response to incremental increases in the stressors, sometimes with dramatic ecological and economic consequences. These catastrophic shifts are faster and larger than expected from the changes in the stressors and happen once a tipping point is crossed.

Previous studies show that city metrics having to do with growth, productivity and overall energy consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling results in crises called ‘singularities’, where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent ‘resets’ or innovations that postpone the system's collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and planetary civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an ‘asymptotic burnout’, an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeosta

En apparence bien silencieux, les champignons seraient en réalité assez bavards. C’est ce que révèle une nouvelle étude publiée dans la revue Royal Society Open Science mercredi 6 avril. Le chercheur britannique Andrew Adamatzky a étudié quatre espèces de champignons : l’enoki, la branchie fendue, le fantôme et la chenille.

With signs that Moscow’s initial invasion strategy has not gone according to plan, the crisis in Ukraine has reached a critical moment.

On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.

L’Institut royal météorologique (IRM) n’a pas émis de code rouge en prévision de la tempête Eunice, qui doit balayer notre pays vendredi après-midi, a indiqué vendredi sur Twitter le météorologue David Dehenauw.

Depuis 2008, des éoliennes pointent le bout de leurs hélices dans la mer du Nord belge. Comment se comporte la vie marine autour de ces éoliennes et quel impact ont-elles sur les oiseaux? C'est ce qu'observe depuis 13 ans le programme WinMon.BE, qui fait le bilan dans un nouveau rapport relayé vendredi par l'Institut royal des sciences naturelles de Belgique (IRSNB).