Does Earth Have Limits?: The Chemistry of Pollution, Episode 4

Chain Reaction by ACS

Pollution is only one way humans are altering our planet. There’s climate change, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, and much more. Earth system scientists, including biological oceanographer Katherine Richardson, developed the nine planetary boundaries, a framework to understand what Earth systems are critical for life, and what will happen if human-caused changes to our planet continue. Katherine unpacks these boundaries, revealing how chemistry sits at the heart of both the problems and solutions to the equilibrium of many of these critical systems. It’s a sobering yet hopeful look at humanity’s future on a finite planet. 

Transcripts and episode sources at acs.org/chainreaction

More description

Pollution is only one way humans are altering our planet. There’s climate change, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, and much more. Earth system scientists, including biological oceanographer Katherine Richardson, developed the nine planetary boundaries, a framework to understand what Earth systems are critical for life, and what will happen if human-caused changes to our planet continue. Katherine unpacks these boundaries, revealing how chemistry sits at the heart of both the problems and solutions to the equilibrium of many of these critical systems. It’s a sobering yet hopeful look at humanity’s future on a finite planet. 

Transcripts and episode sources at acs.org/chainreaction

2026-05-14 29 min Transcript
Listen elsewhere

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

Open the Transcript tab to load the transcript.

Chapters

No chapters available.