Moves

A biosphere already operating near several planetary boundaries (binding-constraint: atmospheric and oceanic sinks are the close walls, not solar influx). R_living for most major classes of life is bounded by climate stability within roughly the Holocene envelope, on which functional diversity and current ecosystem geometry depend.

Additional cumulative emissions and longer use-lives for the marginal infrastructure. Probability mass shifts toward warming trajectories above the thresholds at which coral, low-altitude polar, montane, and major-river-delta ecosystems lose their current configurations. R_living for those classes contracts toward zero on multi-decade horizons; R_living for most other classes narrows by removing the lower-warming branches of the reachable set.

Centuries to millennia for the climatic effects (CO₂ residence time, ice-sheet hysteresis). Decades for the infrastructure-financial lock-in.

Most major classes of life, with steepest loss to ecosystems already at the edge of their climatic envelope. Human communities in low-lying coastal and arid-margin regions disproportionately. Future generations who inherit a configuration with permanently narrower R_living (time-asymmetry).

Existing fossil-capital holders, in financial terms, over the lock-in window. Some short-horizon energy-security observer-classes. Nothing at category level for life-persisting observers (observer-relative-option-space).

A demonstrated, scaled atmospheric-sink technology with no net-additional planetary-boundary cost — a substitution for the absorption-side invariant flagged in substitution-limits. Not promises; demonstrated. Or evidence that current emissions trajectories do not in fact narrow R_living for the named ecosystem classes — the IPCC's own confidence intervals would have to shift substantially. Neither is currently in evidence.

A current configuration in which several pathogen lineages are accumulating resistance to multiple antibiotic classes at a rate faster than new compounds are reaching clinical use. R_living for the medical-intervention-dependent classes of human life (post-surgical recovery, immunocompromised populations, neonatal medicine) currently includes survival pathways that depend on antibiotic efficacy continuing to exist as a configuration.

Slower drift toward broad-spectrum resistance. Antibiotic efficacy preserved as a usable configuration for longer — possibly long enough for replacement therapies (phages, narrower-spectrum agents) to mature. R_living for the affected human-life classes is preserved that would otherwise contract.

Decades for resistance evolution; the lost configurations are not easily restorable once antibiotic classes are exhausted.

Livestock producers operating on tight margins where prophylactic antibiotics substitute for housing or husbandry capital. Some short-horizon human patients whose prescriptions are narrowed.

Future patients in all the affected human-life classes. Hospital systems whose capacity to perform routine high-risk procedures continues to exist. Animal populations themselves, at category level, by reducing selection pressure for resistance reservoirs.

A demonstrated, broadly applicable replacement for the antibiotic configuration (mature, regulated phage therapy at clinical scale) that materially reduces dependence on the current antibiotic classes within the decision horizon. This would weaken the case for stewardship, not eliminate it.

A biosphere on a warming trajectory whose upper bound depends on emissions decisions made over the same window. R_living for several ecosystem classes contracts as warming proceeds; SAI is being evaluated as a move that could preserve some of that R_living temporarily.

Two things happen at once. Some currently-contracting R_living is held open (coral, polar, montane systems get more time). And a new dependency is introduced — the biosphere now sits inside a configuration that requires continued operation of the SAI programme to remain in its post-move state. Cessation produces termination shock with steep rebound warming. Side effects (regional precipitation pattern changes, ozone interactions, stratospheric chemistry) further narrow R_living for classes whose configurations depend on regional rainfall or stratospheric ozone.

The aerosols themselves wash out in years; the warming they mask is centuries-scale; the configuration-dependence — the biosphere now requiring the programme — is open-ended for as long as the underlying CO₂ remains elevated.

Regions affected by altered precipitation patterns (monsoon-dependent agriculture in particular). Future generations who inherit the dependency. Observer-classes whose R_living depends on stratospheric chemistry remaining within its current envelope.

Ecosystems whose climatic envelope is preserved during the operation window. Short-to-medium-horizon human populations in regions where the warming-offset matters more than the regional-pattern cost.

Robust regional-pattern modelling showing precipitation effects are smaller than current ensembles suggest. Demonstrated parallel decarbonisation at a rate that converts SAI from "permanent dependency" to "bridging measure". Evidence that termination-shock risk can be governed institutionally over centuries — which is itself a strong claim about coordination-wealth persistence.

Agricultural land currently in net-degrading configuration in most of the world's major breadbaskets — topsoil loss exceeding regeneration, organic matter declining, increasing dependence on synthetic inputs (substitution-limits applies: topsoil is one of the named bounded invariants). R_living for agriculturally-dependent classes of human life is presently maintained by drawing down a stock that does not replenish on relevant horizons.

Slow rebuild of topsoil structure on enrolled land, with knock-on effects: increased water retention, microbial diversity, carbon sequestration as side-product. R_living expands for classes that depend on soil persistence (most agriculturally-dependent classes), and also for some pollinator and soil-fauna classes whose configurations recover with reduced disturbance.

Decades to centuries on the build side (soil organic matter accumulates slowly). The configuration-change itself is reversible — policy can be withdrawn — but the gains, once present, are themselves durable.

Public budgets, in fiscal terms. Short-horizon yield in some transition years, partially offset by reduced input costs.

Long-horizon humans dependent on continued agricultural productivity. Soil-fauna and pollinator categories. Watersheds downstream of enrolled land (reduced run-off, sediment, fertiliser export). The atmosphere, modestly, as carbon sink-side bonus.

Demonstration that the practice-bundle does not in fact rebuild soil at the rates claimed in the better field-trial literature. Or that the enrolment cost displaces other interventions with larger Δω (an opportunity-cost argument, not a Δω-on-this-move argument). Neither is currently in evidence at scale.

A cultural-and-knowledge configuration in which works enter the public domain on a delayed but eventual schedule. R_living for cultural-and-coordination observer-classes (coordination-wealth) currently includes the reachable set of derivative, educational, remixed, archived, and translated configurations that depend on public-domain access.

That reachable set contracts. Derivative configurations not made because rights cannot be cleared. Orphan works whose rights-holders cannot be located but whose use is legally exposed. Educational and archival configurations that decay because no party has both the right and the incentive to maintain them. The R_living of the cultural class of life — the configurations that propagate distinction-making across generations — narrows for the duration of the extension and, crucially, for the works that fall out of preservation entirely during it.

Decades for the policy itself; permanent for the works lost to non-preservation during the extension window. Historical precedent: substantial volumes of early-20th-century film, recorded music, and printed material are now physically lost because no party had both rights and incentive to preserve them during their long extended terms.

Cultural-and-coordination observer-classes broadly. Future generations who inherit a narrower preserved-cultural-substrate. Educators, translators, archivists, derivative creators, and the publics they serve.

Existing rights-holders during the extension window, financially. A small minority of works generate meaningful residual income that far out; the modal effect is non-use.

A demonstrated, robust mechanism by which longer terms increase the rate at which valuable cultural configurations get created or preserved. The empirical economics literature (Heald, Pollock, the Hargreaves review and successors) currently runs the other way; the move would need that body of work to be substantially wrong.

A habitat-and-species configuration in which destruction at site A would, without the rule, either not be permitted or require a more substantial showing. R_living for the affected species and ecological-community classes currently depends on site A's specific configuration — soil, hydrology, microbial communities, mycorrhizal networks, age-class structure, embeddedness in the surrounding landscape — much of which is not readily reproducible at site B (substitution-limits; stability-not-stasis applied to ecosystems).

The empirically interesting case. The literature on offset outcomes (zu Ermgassen and collaborators on no-net-loss; Maron and others; UK Defra and Australian state reviews) is consistently worse than the literature on offset designs suggests it should be. Created or restored habitats routinely fail to reach equivalence within the regulatory monitoring horizons; "protection" offsets that prevent loss that would not have happened anyway add no R_living at all (the additionality problem). The post-move R_living, evaluated against the counterfactual of not granting the permit, is on average smaller than the pre-move R_living. Evaluated against the counterfactual of granting the permit with no offset, it is marginally larger. Both counterfactuals are real; which one to take as the comparison is a framework-internal question.

Decades to centuries for the destroyed configurations at site A; the offset rule itself is reversible policy. The decision-precedent is institutionally sticky.

The species and ecological communities specific to site A, where local extinction or community collapse is rarely fully compensated. Long-horizon ecological-integrity observer-classes. The future ecological-economics community whose evidence base accumulates against the practice while regulators continue to permit it.

The developer at site A, immediately. The regulator, in administrative-legibility terms (the rule makes permit decisions more rule-bound, less discretionary). Some restored sites that genuinely succeed and constitute net additions where they would not otherwise exist.

A monitoring-and-enforcement regime that demonstrably achieves ecological equivalence within tractable horizons, with additionality verified case-by-case rather than presumed. Empirically, this is what the better offset regimes (UK biodiversity net gain at design intent; some Australian state schemes) are trying to be; whether they will be in operation is, as of this writing, contested.