Special Topic: 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Summit & the Second Green Industry and Sustainable Consumption Expo. Seven of Nine Planetary Boundaries Have Been Breached — Tackling Climate Change Has Shifted from a "Moral Choice" to Economic Competitiveness / Continental Journal. Continental Journal column, Hao Qian reporting from Geneva, Switzerland.
In the summer of 2026, Western Europe experienced unusually persistent and far-reaching high temperatures. The latest monitoring data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union's climate monitoring organization, shows that this summer can already be counted as one of the most extreme summers in Europe in recent decades, with extreme heatwaves accompanied by drought. Global climate change has once again entered the public eye in a way that is increasingly difficult to ignore.
On the occasion of the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Summit, in response to the global climate topics that have recently attracted widespread attention, Continental Journal conducted an exclusive interview with Johan Rockström, Director of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Professor Rockström is also the originator of the "planetary boundaries" theory.
He told Continental Journal bluntly: "Throughout my entire career as a scientist, I have never been as concerned as I am today."
Professor Rockström explained: "We have just experienced a large-scale, unprecedented heatwave in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2026. As of now, we have already experienced a period in which the global average surface temperature has risen by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — this level was reached in 2024, and now, 2026 is very likely to reach it again. Not only that, we are also seeing that the pace of global warming is accelerating."
Professor Rockström candidly told Continental Journal that this acceleration actually only began to appear in the past decade or so, which is very worrying. "If you want to succeed in the economic and financial fields, then you had better invest in keeping the human economy within a stable, resilient safe operating space for the planet."
Professor Rockström candidly told Continental Journal: "Sustainability is the path to the future."
Seven of nine planetary boundaries are already considered to be in a state of transgression. As one of the originators of the "Planetary Boundaries" framework, Professor Rockström has long studied the stability and resilience of the Earth system. In his view, today's risks are no longer merely climate issues, but are evolving into systemic risks involving natural capital, the financial system, and the global economic growth model.
What worries Professor Rockström most is not merely that temperatures will continue to rise. Over the past few decades, there has been a relatively clear relationship between global greenhouse gas emissions and global average temperatures. But over the past decade, scientists have begun to observe a more disturbing trend: the pace of global warming is accelerating.
"Why is this happening? We do not yet have a complete answer," Professor Rockström said. One possible explanation is that the Earth is losing its original resilience. Resilience can be simply understood as the ability of the Earth system to buffer, absorb, and recover after external shocks. Forests, soils, oceans, ice sheets, and other ecosystems all help the Earth absorb carbon, regulate climate, and maintain ecological stability. But as these systems come under increasing pressure, their own buffering capacity may also decline. This means humanity is facing a dual risk: "On the one hand, global warming is continuing; on the other hand, the Earth system's ability to cope with this warming may be declining."
Professor Rockström linked this trend to the "planetary boundaries" he has long studied. In 2009, Professor Rockström and a group of scientists proposed the "planetary boundaries" framework, attempting to answer a question: As human activities continue to expand, how many non-negotiable safety boundaries does the Earth actually have? At present, this framework involves nine key Earth system processes. Professor Rockström's analysis shows that seven of the nine planetary boundaries are currently considered to be transgressed, including climate change, biodiversity, land system change, freshwater use, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, and "novel entities" — that is, the large quantities of chemicals and pollutants manufactured by humans.
Among these, the loss of biodiversity is especially worrying. In his view, the destruction of ecosystems is not an isolated environmental problem. Deforestation, water stress, soil degradation, declining biodiversity, and deterioration of marine ecosystems will ultimately affect the natural foundation on which human economic activity depends.
"We are weakening the natural capital that forms the basis of the economy. From a financial perspective, this is a very dangerous path we are taking."
The Earth system still has a window for change, but the window will not remain open forever. In the past, climate change was often seen as a problem to be solved by governments and environmental agencies. But in Professor Rockström's view, this understanding is outdated. Extreme weather is entering the economic system through channels such as supply chains, infrastructure, insurance, agriculture, energy, and financial markets. Drought can affect agricultural production, floods can damage infrastructure, heatwaves can reduce labor productivity, sea-level rise can change the value of coastal assets, and ecosystem degradation can affect companies' long-term ability to obtain raw materials and natural resources. Therefore, climate risk will ultimately translate into corporate risk, financial risk, and growth risk.
"What we are seeing is not only that millions of people are suffering more because of droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and changes in disease transmission patterns. The value chains of companies, industries, and various economic sectors are becoming more fragile."
This means that climate change can no longer be understood merely as a future risk, but is increasingly becoming an operational issue that companies must face today. In this sense, the concept of "natural capital" proposed by Professor Rockström forms an important link with the traditional financial concept of capital: "If natural systems themselves are the foundation of economic activity, then destroying natural capital is essentially consuming the underlying assets of economic growth."
Despite giving such a grim assessment, Professor Rockström also believes that the Earth system still has enough "buffer time" at present. "The window to change direction still exists, but the window will not remain open indefinitely."
Professor Rockström believes that humanity needs to use the opportunities that still exist to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and to change the ways land, water resources, and natural ecosystems are used. Professor Rockström believes that renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass have already begun to possess increasingly strong economic competitiveness. "Today, there is no longer any sufficient reason anywhere in the world to continue using coal for power generation, because compared with solar, wind, hydropower, or biomass, coal power is not only more expensive but also causes more pollution."
In his view, the reason the energy transition has not yet been completed is largely because, in the existing pricing system, the true cost of fossil fuels is not fully reflected in market prices. Citing the concept of the "social cost of carbon," Professor Rockström pointed out that the current scientific estimate of the social cost caused by carbon emissions is about US$200 to US$500 per ton of carbon dioxide, while the carbon price in the market is far below this level. In other words, the global economy is still using fossil fuels in a way that "underestimates the true cost."
AI itself is also a huge consumer of resources. Professor Rockström candidly told Continental Journal that AI has enormous potential to help humanity accelerate the sustainable transition and has already been used in areas such as scientific analysis, massive data processing, energy system optimization, and resource allocation. "Through the combination of satellites and AI, humanity is also gaining unprecedented Earth observation capabilities, and in the future will be able to monitor forests, agricultural soils, permafrost, ice sheets, coastlines, and even deep-sea ecosystems in a more real-time and precise way." For a planet undergoing global ecological change, this capability means that for the first time, humanity may have a "real-time monitoring network" covering the entire Earth system.
But Professor Rockström is not blindly optimistic about AI because of this. He believes AI may also exacerbate the spread of disinformation, social distrust, and uncontrolled technological development. At the same time, there is another issue that is often overlooked: "AI itself is also a huge consumer of resources, and massive data centers require large amounts of energy and fresh water." Therefore, if AI development is built on fossil energy and unsustainable water consumption, then while helping the green transition, it may also create new environmental pressures. "We need to take all of these factors into account as we move forward."
China, from green manufacturing to scientific innovation, calls for more cooperation. Professor Rockström believes that on the issue of green transition, "China is a world leader." In his view, China began strategic investment more than a decade ago and has already become a global leading force in multiple green industry fields — including solar and wind energy, battery technology, electric vehicles, and heavy electric trucks. At the same time, China is also advancing the circular economy, ecosystem management, and continuously increasing investment in scientific research. "All of these are areas where we need to learn and also need to cooperate with China."
However, Professor Rockström also pointed out that China's economy is enormous, so its green transition itself is also a complex task. His suggestion is that China can further accelerate its transition to a future of "electrification, digitalization, and renewable energy." Compared with the energy transition itself, he especially values China's investment in Earth system science and Earth observation. "Systematic research on the resilience, operating mechanisms, and health of the entire planet will become an important frontier of future science, and China can play a greater role in it," Professor Rockström candidly told Continental Journal. More importantly, this scientific capability does not only serve China itself; it may also become part of global cooperation. "I hope China's influence in this field can also, in a positive way, inspire other regions of the world to carry out similar scientific research and practical action."
Sustainable development is no longer merely a "moral obligation." Regarding the green transition now taking place globally, what Professor Rockström most wants to change may be people's traditional understanding of "sustainable development." For a long time, environmental protection and economic growth have often seemed to be placed in a contradictory relationship: protecting the environment means higher costs, and green transition means the economy must sacrifice part of its growth. But Professor Rockström believes that this binary opposition is losing its basis in reality. "It is no longer, as it was often described in the past, merely a moral obligation, or something that means sacrifice. On the contrary, science is telling us that if we do not protect nature, economic growth itself will be threatened. Natural capital is not an appendage outside the economic system, but the underlying asset of economic growth."
This also means that sustainable development is gradually moving from relatively marginal topics such as corporate social responsibility and environmental governance toward the core of the economic growth model. "If you want the economy and finance to succeed, then you had better invest in keeping the human economy within a stable, resilient safe operating space for the planet." For global companies, this means the green transition is changing from a question of "whether it should be done" to a question of "how to do it faster, more effectively, and more competitively." For governments, it means energy, industrial, financial, technological, and environmental policies are becoming increasingly difficult to separate. For investors, natural capital, climate risk, and corporate resilience in responding to extreme events are also becoming important variables for judging long-term value.
In Professor Rockström's view, research and investment in the above areas may even "become the frontier of future development, and also the frontier of innovation, competitiveness, security, and resilience." He summarized his judgment to Continental Journal in a very concise sentence: "Sustainability is the path to the future."
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