Thoughts on Geoengineering
In previous posts, I have made a big deal about how difficult it is to go green, despite knowledge that going green is the right thing to do. If doing the right thing was easy, then many of the difficulties of the world would be erased. I see geoengineering as a way around that.
Ideally, humanity would continue to reduce carbon emissions, eventually replacing polluting sources of energy with clean and renewable technologies. Now, I know the “realism” card is played too often in debates. It can be a bit annoying to constantly be told that one’s view is too idealistic and would “never work” given reality. Many times, it is precisely the attitude that the problem is intractable that makes it so. In this case, though, it is clear that there are real hurdles to reducing global warming. I am not going to say that these hurdles will not ever be overcome. In fact, I really do think that it is possible that lazy people like me who do not do enough for the environment will become more rare as more and more generations are born. That said, this change will take time. In the mean time, global warming persists.
A big concern of mine has not just been that people are realistically not going to change their ways and reduce their impact on the climate. I have also been concerned that it is simply too late. Two of the documentaries we watched this semester, Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour, show horrific scenes of glaciers collapsing, polar bears dying, and floods and hurricanes destroying human cities. Hasn’t the end already begun? It seems from these documentaries that we are in the beginning of the movie 2012. Even if we do manage to survive, what is the point? Our planet will be completely destroyed, never to be the same again!
Some people criticize geoengineering as only being a stopgap, but that is precisely why it gives me hope. This gives humanity more time to change. It need not be seen as a replacement for reducing carbon emissions. Unlike some people, I do not see geoengineering as something that will cause us to think that we no longer need to switch away from fossil fuels. It is my expectation that scarcity alone will make renewable resources more competitive in the coming years, and geoengineering allows the Earth to stay alive long enough to realize that day. It is something that will help with the transition that has caused me the greatest concern.
The possibility of geoengineering gives me hope that we could reverse some of the damages of global warming, especially as the geoengineering techniques become more popular.
In no way is geoengineering ideal. Some of its methods carry risks that should be taken into consideration. I do not really want aerosol to prevent star gazing from the ground, for example. That said, although it is not ideal, we are not in ideal conditions. We have a real threat of global warming, and we may not be able to transition away from our polluting habits soon enough.
