Limiting Global Warming To Two Degrees Celsius Is Not Enough

The biggest threat to life on Earth is the massive damage to the biosphere by humans. This damage comes from our heavy resource use, waste production, and severe global warming.

Human actions are pushing natural systems past their limits (Rogers 2025). This causes mass extinctions and loss of vital life support systems. The endless drive for economic growth is unsustainable. “A great change in our stewardship of the Earth is required. . .” (Ripple et al. 2017, Rogers 2026b). James Lovelock warned that overheating the planet is the single greatest danger to our world. He stated, “I cannot say too strongly that the greatest threat to life on Earth is overheating” (Lovelock 2019, 57).

Most scientists doubt we can limit the global average temperature rise to 2^o C. But even if we do, our damage to the biosphere will still be catastrophic. Even if we stop greenhouse emissions, it will take centuries for climate to stabilize at the new warmer level (Rogers 2026a). Moreover, if the human population remains in the billions, the damage we cause will keep growing. Here are some of the human wrought environmental changes that have already occurred or will begin to occur over the next 10-20 years.

1. The ongoing loss of plant and animal species is breaking the living webs that support productivity and stability of the natural world (Richardson et al. 2023).
2. Clearing forests and livestock grazing are destroying  wild habitats, contributing to extinction, and ruining the healthy soils needed to support natural ecosystems and agriculture (Steffen et al. 2015).
3. Human impacts on ecosystem networks break the Earth’s cognitive web that facilitates high biosphere diversity and productivity. This limits resources available to the technosphere and human cultural and social systems (Frank, Grinspoon, and Walker 2022, Milanese 2025). By destroying the microbiome with chemical fertilizers, deforestation, overgrazing, and more, we break the natural connections that create the environment that supports life (Gajbhiye 2025, Handte-Reinecker and Sardeshpande 2025).
4. Flooding the environment with nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers creates huge dead zones in our ponds, lakes, and oceans that kill aquatic life (Carpenter and Bennett 2011).
5. Draining our rivers and underground aquifers to irrigate crops and run our cities removes the fresh water required by natural ecosystems and will empty the people from many large cities (Gleeson et al. 2020).
6. Rising seas will increase salinity of lowlands, destroy coastal ecosystems, and displace hundreds of millions of people worldwide (Hansen et al. 2013).
7. The increase of extreme weather events severely disrupts natural ecosystems, reduces the yields of crucial agricultural crops (Malhi et al. 2020), and damages critical energy and transport infrastructure (Forzieri et al., 2018).
8. Warming seas combine with acidification from fertilizer runoff and CO₂ absorption from the air to cause tropical coral reefs to die (Doney et al. 2009). Abundance of marine life is falling (Zahid et al. 2025) in a catastrophic loss of food for coastal communities.
9. Industry, transportation, deforestation, farming, and desertification release soot and dust particles into the air, blocking sunlight and disrupting the rain patterns needed by natural ecosystems and human farms (Ramanathan et al. 2001).
10. Toxic chemicals and plastics released into the environment poison the bodies of living things and damages the health of the entire global ecosystem (Persson et al. 2022).
11. Air pollution causes breaks in the ozone layer and increases harmful solar radiation that causes cancer in humans and damages plant genetics (Solomon 2019).
12. Irreversible tipping points have been or will be passed (Lenton et al. 2008). Here is a list of some of them:
13. The Greenland Ice Sheet will slowly and permanently melt raising global sea levels by many meters (Boers and Rypdal 2021).
14. The Amazon rainforest will die out.
15. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will fall apart and slide into the ocean causing massive coastal flooding for centuries (DeConto and Pollard 2016).
16. Warm, acidic ocean waters will bleach and kill tropical coral reefs around the world, resulting in a devastating loss of diversity and productivity of marine sea life (Dixon et al. 2022).
17. Rapid melting of northern permafrost will release huge amounts of trapped carbon creating even more global heating (Turetsky et al. 2020).
18. The Barents Sea will rapidly lose its winter sea ice disrupting northern ecosystems and weather patterns (Onarheim et al. 2018).
19. Mountain glaciers will melt away shrinking essential drinking water supplies for lowland ecosystems and human communities (Hugonnet et al. 2021).
20. The ocean currents in the Labrador Sea will break down and cause major weather shifts across the North Atlantic region (Armstrong McKay et al. 2022).

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