You’re the product of stability on a planetary scale. Around 12,000 years ago, Earth warmed from an ice age into the relatively consistent climate that allowed humans to adopt agriculture, literally putting down roots. That stability, though, is now shattered, as more than 8 billion people rapidly heat the planet, ravage its ecosystems, and plunder its resources. 

In a new report, scientists warn that we’ve crossed yet another “planetary boundary,” a threshold that keeps Earth’s systems hospitable to life — a sort of global resilience that allows the planet to absorb shocks. This time, it’s the relentless acidification of the seas that’s crossed into dangerous territory, threatening all manner of marine life, including the organisms at the base of the food web. Of the nine total planetary boundaries, this is the seventh that’s been breached. 

“What this health check …

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