3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
Climate destabilization is the key threat of catastrophic change. Humans have become a
planetary volcanic force – releasing the greenhouse gas (GHG in carbon-dioxide equivalents,
CO 2 -e) emissions every 10 hours equivalent to the 1992 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.
Failure to halt these CO 2 -e emissions will result in the equivalent of 90,000 human-triggered
volcanic explosions this century. CO 2 -e directly increases the Earth’s temperature, as well as
causing water vapor to increase in the atmosphere. Water is another GHG, which results in
further raising the global temperature. 324 Scientists estimate each 1 degree Celsius rise in
global temperature activates 7 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere.
Climatologists calculate that this additional water vapor leads to a feedback loop doubling the
amount of warming directly caused by CO 2 . That is to say, a 1°C rise triggered by CO 2 will cause
the global temperature to go up another 1°C as result of the increased water vapor.
Humanity’s current emissions trajectory is projected to increase global temperature by 5 to 7
degrees Celsius this century, injecting 35 to 50 percent more moisture into the atmosphere.
The 1-degree C rise already occurring has unleashed a costly, continuous series of local and
regional catastrophic weather patterns (e.g., numerous 1-in-500-year floods, droughts,
wildfires, severe storms, recurring within months or several years). The one certainty about
future weather is it will be filled with uncertainty and the increasing frequency of catastrophyrelated
weather disasters.
Herein lies the importance of rewilding; biosphere valleys augment resilience to deal and cope
with climate-triggered catastrophic events. Rewilding, as a protected area design approach,
emerged over the past half century from ecological research in half a dozen field research and
scientific investigative disciplines. 325
It is not currently known how much of Luxembourg’s land set-asides constitutes comprehensive
rewilding practices. But as E.O. Wilson and scores of scientists have argued, rewilding is an
imperative worldwide. Undertaking rewilding in only a few localities, or implementing halfhearted
measures, is inadequate. Just as a circular economy will only fully function when
implemented by most localities in the global economy, so is the case with rewilding. Indeed,
rewilding undertaken mainly by industrialized nations will have negative consequences if it
results in fulfilling the demand for goods by shifting production and resource consumption to
324 Chung, Eui-Seok, Brian Soden, B. J. Sohn, and Lei Shi (2016) Upper-tropospheric moistening in response to
anthropogenic warming, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.1409659111,
PNAS August 12, 2014 vol. 111 no. 32:11636-11641, http://www.pnas.org/content/111/32/11636.
325 Soulè, Michael and Reed Noss (1998) Rewilding and biodiversity conservation as complementary goals for
continental conservation, Wild Earth 8: 18-28.
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