Earth as a Closed Life-Support System
Abstract
We formulate planetary sustainability as a minimal nonequilibrium problem for coupled finite stocks and fluxes, using the operational language of closed life-support systems: inventories, flux balances, recycling efficiencies, processing capacities, reserve times and failure thresholds. Rather than asserting that waste is universally more limiting than resources, we propose a reserve-time principle: the binding constraint is whichever buffer becomes critical first. A nonlinear model coupling a regenerative resource stock, an accumulated waste stock and an activity variable exhibits a soft threshold, where waste suppresses growth while processing remains formally capable, and a hard threshold, where waste production exceeds maximal processing capacity. With immediate waste feedback, activity settles globally at the soft threshold; the hard threshold is crossed only transiently or under exogenous forcing. A resource-side threshold completes the picture. We extend the model to recycling and to multiple resource and waste classes, give a numerical example, situate the four-function description of life against the origin of life, viruses and aging, contrast the biosphere's two long-term failure modes, and relate the approach to Spaceship Earth, planetary boundaries, Limits to Growth, System Dynamics and stock-pollution economics.
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BibTeX
@misc{gazeau2026earth,
title = {{Earth as a Closed Life-Support System}},
author = {Jean-Pierre Gazeau},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.21505},
eprint = {2608.21505},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05708180v5},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Earth as a Closed Life-Support System
AU - Jean-Pierre Gazeau
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/22
PB - HAL
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.21505
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05708180v5
AB - We formulate planetary sustainability as a minimal nonequilibrium problem for coupled finite stocks and fluxes, using the operational language of closed life-support systems: inventories, flux balances, recycling efficiencies, processing capacities, reserve times and failure thresholds. Rather than asserting that waste is universally more limiting than resources, we propose a reserve-time principle: the binding constraint is whichever buffer becomes critical first. A nonlinear model coupling a regenerative resource stock, an accumulated waste stock and an activity variable exhibits a soft threshold, where waste suppresses growth while processing remains formally capable, and a hard threshold, where waste production exceeds maximal processing capacity. With immediate waste feedback, activity settles globally at the soft threshold; the hard threshold is crossed only transiently or under exogenous forcing. A resource-side threshold completes the picture. We extend the model to recycling and to multiple resource and waste classes, give a numerical example, situate the four-function description of life against the origin of life, viruses and aging, contrast the biosphere's two long-term failure modes, and relate the approach to Spaceship Earth, planetary boundaries, Limits to Growth, System Dynamics and stock-pollution economics.
ER -