In 2006, Al Gore made the headlines with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Now I have to confess I’ve never seen it, but having seen Mr. Gore in other settings, I’m not a big fan of him and probably never will. That said, plenty of folks in the environmental world thought it was a timely film that was a clarion call to action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to turn the tide on global warming before it's too late. The fervor of the movement to reduce carbon emissions has ramped up in recent years, gaining political and popular momentum, some even calling it the "Biggest Threat Modern Humans Have Ever Faced" and other such hyperbole. Personally, I think it's a good idea to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy sources (and other non-renewable materials for that matter), and to reduce particulate pollution from vehicles, but I'm not convinced that global warming is the biggest threat to our existence on Earth. My views on this have shifted over the years. The last book I read on the topic was quite compelling and worth a read: Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything: Michaels, Patrick J., Knappenberger, Paul C.: 9781944424039: Amazon.com: Books.
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OK, so global warming may or may not be an inconvenient truth, depending on your viewpoint. What is evident to me as an environmental engineer is that there are several other truths that are even more inconvenient with respect to humanity's impact on the Earth. A few years ago I read a very interesting book called "The Human Quest" by Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum that presented the idea of planetary boundaries. The figure below summarizes their opinions nicely.
Things shown in red are higher risk of causing problems beyond what the natural environment can handle, green are within the ability of the environment to deal with them, and the yellows are in-between with some uncertainty on their risk. What's interesting to me, with all the press around climate change is that it's in the yellow zone for these guys, whereas biochemical flows for phosphorus and nitrogen are firmly in the red, along with genetic diversity.
As a wastewater guy, I'm not surprised by this as eutrophication caused by nutrient emissions have been a hot topic for as long as I've been a poop engineer, grey hair and all (I actually started my career doing research into biological nutrient removal). What's a little frustrating is all the energy and media focus going into climate change when we have bigger problems and higher environmental risks posed by nitrogen and phosphorus and yet the media and the politicians doggedly focus on carbon. Even within the wastewater world folks are spending their time and effort looking at "decarbonization" when the impact is probably less than 1% of all human emissions of CO2e - I even helped to write a chapter in a book on the whole topic! Shame on me, I guess.
I would love for there to be a bigger focus on phosphorus and nitrogen. Maybe with all the buzz about the "circular economy" thanks to the furor over climate change we'll take a closer look at how phosphorus and nitrogen are moved around the Earth, and the human impact on them. I dunno, I have a feeling the water industry will get sidetracked on plastics or PFAS or some other minor pollutant whilst we do very little to restore the nutrient cycle.
So what do you think?
