Five Ways to End the World
June 10th, 2008 by AndrewGeoengineering is the intentional analogue of anthropogenic climate change - global scale modification of our natural environment intended to improve its habitability. In the wake of growing awareness surrounding climate change, geoengineering has emerged as a highly controversial field with vocal advocates and detractors alike. While some see a macro-scale scientific solution as the silver bullet that will save us from ourselves, the sheer scale of the topic and the host of staggeringly complex uncertainties surrounding any geoengineering scheme provide unprecedented opportunity for dangerous unintended circumstances.
I recently watched a BBC documentary called “Five Ways to Save the World.” It details five massive geoengineering schemes, ranging from a gigantic sixteen-trillion-piece space mirror, to forests of artificial chemical “trees” designed to sequester CO2. While the scientists in this documentary largely posit their plans as last-ditch efforts to avoid unmitigated climatic catastrophe, the technological proposals have given the political right another way to embrace pseudo-science in order to prop up the status quo. Lifestyle changes, compromise, conservation, and limiting growth are apparently too dramatic - instead, we should launch a perpetuity of rockets into the atmosphere, seeding it with millions of tonnes of sulphate aerosols to increase its albedo and reflect more sunlight. Sure, it might turn the sky green, swiss-cheese the ozone layer, and acidify all rain, but this way, we could still eat hamburgers all the time! Now why the fuck didn’t I think of that?
Given that we may have already overshot critical climate change thresholds, I think it’s dangerous to dismiss any potential solution out of hand. However, what disturbed me most about the documentary wasn’t even the nature of the proposals, but the sentiment voiced by several of the scientists that, “we should be starting now.” I have no qualms over modestly scaled research projects, but I fear that when any such scheme is initiated at a global scale, the unknown factors stand to overwhelm even the most sophisticated models we can develop today. Given our abysmal track record when we’ve tried to ‘fix’ nature, it’s a risk we can ill afford to take.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Really? We should be starting now? I can think of a few other things we should be “starting” to do that don’t run any risk of fucking things up for good. But that’s obvious.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
This strangely reminds me of the irresponsible journalism I read in last month’s WIRED magazine. The feature article argued that eating organic was bad because it took 26 organic cows, to produce the same about of product as 23 antibiotic and hormone injected, cows (among other things). The author also mentioned that these cows produced 16% more CO2. What the writer failed to suggest was minimize consumption and go organic. Aren’t the benefits of organic clear? Do we really need to eat as much beef while we continue to poison everything we wear, eat, and breathe. The only thing that could justify this argument was that we need to take drastic steps to reducing our CO2 production. Another bogus point which was argued was that a the production of a hybrid car creates more CO2 than a Hummer. Hmmmmm…….this sounds like the 1980s mentality where long term consequence wasn’t well-thought out. This discredited a great mag in my mind, and god forbid if its cover telling people to forget organic and drive their SUVs was taken literally.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
That’s brutal.
And I can’t believe they actually trotted out the Prius vs. Hummer study. I’m assuming they’re referring to the widely-cited study by CNW Marketing that came out a few years ago (since it’s the only one written that supports that conclusion).
That ’study’ has been completely, utterly, and thoroughly de-bunked by a variety of sources (ones that actually describe their methodology, unlike the study in question), so it pains me to see that rogue journalists trying to make some kind of a contrarian statement about sustainability continue to abuse it…
June 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_intro
I think this is the article referred to. For an analysis of it, go here:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008064.html
The Wired article does mention the Prius/Hummer study, but rightly dismisses it. Regarding hybrids, however, they do argue that you’re better off buying a used car than a new hybrid, because the energy required to build the new car is much greater than the added inefficiencies of an older car.
The article makes some important and controversial points - just as you mentioned the ‘local is not always better’ debate - but some of what they say is wrong-headed, for sure. The worldchanging article linked to this piece: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1647/73/
it’s a point by point rebuttal - some of it the author agrees with, others he’s neutral on (nuclear and GM, for instance), and there are other bits that he sees as flat-out wrong.