This year’s Our Planet Our Future film event took place at our regular venue, The Plough and Harrow pub in Harpenden was a group discussion of the Sir David Attenborough 2021 film Breaking Boundaries which we watched prior to attending.
The friendly and welcoming environment allowed us to share our thoughts and feelings about the film and about where we find ourselves today regarding the various climate change tipping points such as carbon dioxide emissions, irreversible polar ice melt, global average ocean temperature and beyond.
The discussion continued with exploring how we can make changes in our own lives to help make a difference, especially around ideas promoting a circular economy for goods with a strong emphasis on reuse, repair and repurposing, coupled with less consumption and things made to last, to be repaired and dismantled for recovery of materials.
We also learned of the world’s first reuse mall, ReTuna a short distance from Stockholm, Sweden which provides a shopping experience where all the goods for sale are items which have been repaired or made into something else.
A ten minute clip of the Breaking Boundaries film which we watched together as a group is freely available to watch on the WWF website see link below, with the full length film available on the usual platforms e.g. Netflix.
Join us at future Our Planet Our Future events
Our Planet Our Future is a series of regular events and talks about sustainability, free for everyone to attend. Speakers are local, and present interesting and sometimes novel perspectives about moving towards a more sustainable life and lower carbon economy. Our events take place in Harpenden on alternate months. Each year our events include a film, a local walk and evenings with talks and discussion. Find out more and book your free place at our future events here.
Seeking more information about Planetary Boundaries …
There are nine planetary boundaries beyond which there is a risk of destabilisation of the Earth system that would threaten human societal development:
- climate change, such as national environmental footprints and excessive greenhouse gas emissions;
- ocean acidification and marine biological systems;
- stratospheric ozone depletion;
- disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle;
- global water use;
- land use change;
- erosion of biodiversity;
- the increase of aerosols and existing substances in the atmosphere such as synthetic chemicals ;
- the introduction of new entities into the biosphere.
Image credit: Stockholm Resilience Institute; plot annotated for clarification
The nine planetary boundaries beyond which there is a risk of destabilisation of the Earth system that would threaten human societal development, April 2022 version. Humanity had crossed out of the green “safe” space across six out of nine boundaries, and was close to crossing one other boundary (ocean acidification).