Beyond Climate: Fossil fuels rapidly eroding Earth’s ‘safe operating space’

• This exclusive three-part Mongabay mini-series explores how the oil, natural gas and coal industry are destabilizing nine vital Earth systems, which create a “safe operating space” for humanity and other life on the planet.
• The first story in the series examined some of the direct detrimental impacts of fossil fuels, petroleum-based agrochemicals and petrochemicals (such as plastics) on climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution of the world’s oceans and other forms of pollution.
• This story looks at the direct and indirect impacts that hydrocarbon production is having as it destabilizes Earth’s freshwater systems; influences rapid land use change; pollutes air, land and water; potentially contributes to ozone layer decay; and ultimately impacts life on Earth.
• Scientists say humanity’s actions — inclusive of burning fossil fuels and producing petrochemical and agrochemical products — has already pushed Earth into the danger zone, overshooting six of nine critical planetary boundaries. Unless we pull back from these violated thresholds, life as we know it is at risk.

Localized impacts of oil and gas extraction and distribution can reverberate over great distances, with clear global implications on land use change (a planetary boundary), while also triggering more climate change, experts say. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project has been described as a “climate bomb” due to the CO2 it will emit as the fossil fuel it transports is burned; multiple other oil and gas projects under development across the globe have been similarly described.

“The East African Crude Oil Pipeline is a great example of where there is currently no meaningful production today, but there is a potential for an enormous amount of oil to come online,” says Bart Wickel, science and research director at the nonprofit Earth Insight. “Such [fossil fuel infrastructure] investments are really pushing us over the climate change edge, much further than we would be based on existing production.”

According to analysis by Earth Insight, more than 135 million hectares (333.6 million acres) of undisturbed tropical forest overlap with current and future oil and gas blocks in the Amazon and Congo. Drilling in these native forests would further destabilize the already transgressed land use boundary while also greatly damaging global biodiversity (another boundary).

Ecological and social consequences of such projects can cause a ripple effect through natural areas, say experts such as Wickel, but have received far less attention compared with major land use drivers, such as agricultural expansion. “What is often ignored is the massive impact of fossil fuel exploration, exploitation and infrastructure development on water resources, biodiversity and local people,” he notes.