If Earth were to get an annual health checkup akin to a person’s physical exam, a doctor would say the planet is “really quite sick right now.”

That’s how Joyeeta Gupta, professor of environment and development at the University of Amsterdam, put it at a Wednesday press conference accompanying the publication of new research in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. Co-authored by Gupta and 50 other scientists from around the world, it warns that nearly every threshold for a “safe and just” planet has already been breached and pleads for swift action to protect “the global commons for all people now and into the future.”

As Carbon Brief reported: “The new study develops the idea of ‘planetary boundaries,’ first set out in an influential 2009 paper. The paper had defined a set of interlinked thresholds that it said would ensure a ‘safe operating space for humanity.’ Its authors had warned that crossing these thresholds ‘could have disastrous consequences.’”

The new paper, written by many of the same people, introduces justice […]

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