Geoengineering is a very dangerous and ethically questionable response to climate change, but it feels increasingly inevitable.
Governments are simply not willing to do what is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, which is unsurprising because voters refuse to elect anyone who even gestures at the scale of change required.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that worsening climatic conditions make people more willing to support fossil fuel abolition. Instead, it seems to drive people toward false solutions or just inchoate anger. Even the ‘serious’ governments are still using taxpayer money to subsidize brand-new fossil fuel production. Everyone has a story about why their industry is the one that doesn’t need to shut down.
It is hard to believe that when climate disruption continues to get worse every year (with El Nino, people are predicting next year will be the hottest in history) the worst-hit places won’t start modifying the atmosphere to try to cancel it out — side-effects, impacts on others, and long-term risks be damned. We are a species that has always preferred monthly life-long $1500 injections with a mystery drug to be thinner, rather than changing our diets.
Related:
- Geoengineering: wise to have a fallback option
- Will technology save us?
- Geoengineering with lasers
- Ken Caldeira on geoengineering as contingency
- Ocean iron fertilization for geoengineering
- Who would control geoengineering?
- CBC documentary on geoengineering
- Geoengineering via rock weathering
- Open thread: shadow solutions to climate change
- Planting trees won’t solve climate change