The recent Paris accord on global climate change is a key step in acknowledging biophysical limits to human actions, but the challenge of respecting the biosphere’s ecological limits remains underrated. We analyze how respecting these limits squarely conflicts with an economy centered on growth and technology to mitigate environmental stress. The need to mitigate human impacts on species and natural systems has made conservation science a major multidisciplinary discipline. Society and conservation science have tried unsuccessfully to resolve this need within the growth paradigm. We show that its resolution increasingly demands profound shifts in societal values. Our aim is to identify the nature of these necessary shifts and to explore how they define future paths for conservation science.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/05/13/1525003113.abstract.html?etoc Steve
