Romper los límites: La ciencia de nuestro planeta

Dear filmmakers everywhere: it is a good thing you attempt to do by explaining the sorry state of the planet but you all miss the key problem and solution. People are not going to change their behavior or expectations. They aren't going to give up their electronics or other creature comforts. So what is the problem really? It is people. There are too many of us on this planet now and it isn't sustainable. More people are coming so if we don't name the problem, how can we ever fix it? Overpopulation is the entire problem and reducing population is the only solution. Why is it so hard for people to see that?

Johan says that the actions of humans alone in the past 50 years are responsible for pushing humanity and the planet out of the 10,000-year Holocene and into the Anthropocene. So it seems astounding to me that the global human population was not included as a critical boundary to the destabilization of the planet.

The global human population was just 3 billion in 1960 and it now sits at 7.9 billion, a 160 % increase in less than a lifetime. Just as any farmland has a maximum capacity for the number of livestock, the planet must also have a maximum capacity for the number of humans that demands all of its resources.

Countries like Brazil have seen their populations tripled since 1960; there were 70 million Brazilians then and there are 210 million now. As draconian and inhumane as China's one-child policy was, their population would be 2 billion without it, instead of 1.5 billion, if they had the same population growth as Brazil. Human culture has to change because there is no evolutionary need for any family to have more than two children since most children will survive into adulthood.

David Attenborough is a hopeless optimist and in connection with the concept of Planetary Boundaries this gets to a point where it becomes nearly comical.

A major flaw of the film is that it is sometimes so unprecisein it's science that it verges on being incorrect. It insinuates, for example, that if we start living inside Planetary Boundaries today we cound somehow get all the toothpaste that has already left the tube back in. This is, especially for the climate boundary (and consequentially for the ocean acidification boundary, the connection of which is clearly explained in the film), simply not the case.

Another flaw is that the things we actually can do, right now, are given not very much space in the film. Especially the connection between a meat-centric diet an the bondaries land-use change, biodiversity loss and nitrogen/phosporous cycle are nor at all explained,

But what can I say? Johann Rockström on Netflix. All is not lost. This should receive a huge audience.

I also think that science is only one part of solving this puzzle. Mr. Rockstöm and Mr. Attenborough telling us that we can solve the crisis by cutting, as private citizens, our emissions in halfge every decade, is really, REALLY oversimplifying things. We as private citizens can rearrange the deckchairs but without politics steering the whole ship away from the iceberg this will not do, not by a long shot.

It is definitely worth of your 1 hour 13 minutes time to watch this science-based documentary about how humanity has the dominant role, as Sir David Attenborough perfectly highlighted on his closing narrative, as the only Earth's conscience and brain, whether to lead the world and its ecosystems to the danger zones by continuously doing our business as usual, or to secure the future with a healthy and fresh air, clean water, stable climate, nutritious land, and resilient planet, by doing everything we can to not break the planetary boundaries.

It is a very good documentary for sure. Everyone must understand that it is not just a small problem, but we are facing a global environmental crisis and we do not have 30-50 years more to start changing status quo of destroying everything around us. What was missed is the way how everyone can make an impact right away, without waiting for politicians to finally act. We need to adopt a fully plant-based diet to stop killing billions of animals each year, stop polluting rivers and oceans with cows' and pigs' manure, stop cutting forests so we could eat "less beef". We do not have time anymore for "less meat" and "flexitarian" nonsense. Our planet is dying, and we have mounting evidence that the plant-based diet is the best way how every single person can make the change. And yeah, side effect include better health, normal weight and a great feeling that you are not paying someone to keep living beings in terrible conditions with a brutal slaughter at the end of their short life so you could eat a steak for lunch.