Myopia In Action: Geoengineering
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Featuring: Pointy-headed engineers who can’t see the BIG picture
Like NPR’s coverage, the WSJ articles remain blissfully out of touch with the complex and wide-ranging effects of global climate destabilization. In their economic and technological myopia, both are akin to the Geoengineers who eagerly focus narrowly on one thread of the problem and pick at it with their solutions, failing to realize how badly they can unravel the entire tapestry of the biosphere in the process.
Plenty of technological ‘solutions’ to the problem of burning fossil fuels have been proposed, some even implemented, with disastrous consequences. The notion of switching from coal and oil to natural gas was one “solution” to the problem of global climate destabilization pushed by the Bush and Obama administrations and toxically spread worldwide by Obama’s Secretary of State. But the extraction of natural gas did not diminish the amount and potency of greenhouse gasses in the air, it actually increased methane leakage into the atmosphere, causing even greater global warming. Earlier, under the GHW Bush and Clinton administrations, ethanol from corn or grasses such as sugar cane were promoted, ignoring the resultant land degradation of miles and miles of heavily fertilized, monocrop, herbicide-resistant crops. This myopia resulted in polluted watersheds, devastated beneficial insect populations (increased insecticides) and the mass poisoning of downstream marine life. Nonetheless multiple political and economic sectors became addicted to the ethanol fad (here’s lookin’ at you, Iowa; here’s lookin’ at you, Monsanto). The environmentally disastrous commitment to corn ethanol became embedded in our political machinery (cf. presidential primaries in Iowa).[1] Aside from the agricultural devastation, burning ethanol was still generating greenhouse gasses. No problem was solved, but fortunes were certainly made in the process. The creation of algae-based fuels has also been touted as a “solution” to the burning of coal, but all this does is supplement the fuel supply, not reduce atmospheric carbon emissions. Put crudely: when we burn algae-based fuels, they may be renewable (we can make more algae, unlike making more Jurassic-era oil underground) but they contribute just as much CO2 to the atmosphere as dinosaur mush. Consequently, it is actively funded and promoted by the giant polluters already in play, such as Exxon Mobil.[2] Ditto for “clean coal” and “blue hydrogen” technologies which are promoted to ensure the economic dominance of the existing fossil fuel industries.
Geoengineering relies on a technological (and not a social or political) “fix” to the problem of increasing global climate destabilization. This pleasures Libertarians who hate government intervention, and it satiates free-marketeers who seek to make money off the climate crisis, regardless of the externalities brought about by their profit-generating “solutions”. Unfortunately, for some problems (like nuclear war) there are no technological solutions, as Garrett Hardin points out at the beginning of his critical 1968 address “The Tragedy of the Commons”.[3] Geoengineers tend to blithely dismiss Hardin’s critique and zero in on only one aspect of the problem. The solutions they propose are potentially grossly destabilizing in and of themselves. I will focus on the most commonly discussed one here, though there are others (such as the highly problematic iron-ore seeding of the oceans).[4]
Solar Radiation Management (SRM) is one such shortsighted ‘solution’ proposed by geoengineers who only focus on a single detail at a time. The idea behind SRM is simple: reduce the amount of incoming solar radiation and the problem of global warming is controlled. This can be done through a variety of techniques including: making clouds more reflective, putting physical shields in space (like a giant umbrella), or putting particulates into the atmosphere, thus dimming the overall solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface. Aside from the technological demands of each of these schemes, and putting aside the cost (which would probably be borne by national governments’ taxpayers, to the profit of the corporations implementing the “solution”), and setting aside the question of who will do the actual work, and with whose permission, and how will they regulate it and/or be responsible if anything goes wrong (the umbrella crashes to earth; the particles settle down and poison our waters; etc.), there is still one fundamental flaw inherent in this tech-geek solution: it doesn’t actually solve the problem.[5] It merely creates some razzle dazzle to cover up the fundamental destructiveness of the polluters.
Assuming any particular geoengineering scheme all goes right and does not have calamitous side effects, if we still continue putting CO2 in the atmosphere, the oceans will continue to acidify, killing the oceanic food chain. Assuming an SRM “solution” goes right and the amount of incoming solar radiation is decreased, crop production will fall, wild species will need to rapidly adapt (or go extinct), and there will be unknown effects on human, plant, and animal behavior as a result of diminished light. Assuming SRM goes right it will undermine the push for renewables (by buying more time for fossil fuels) as well as crippling the efficacy of solar projects. “Assuming it goes right” allows a massive distraction from the fundamental problems driving the entire sequence of ecological decline: human population growth and increasing resource consumption. Assuming it goes right, it could still be a geo-political disaster with winners (giant corporations getting the contracts) and losers (human) and even greater losers (all the rest of the biosphere).
Perhaps the solution must be, as biologist Garrett Hardin stated, moral and ethical, not technical at all.
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[1] Michael Grunwald. “How the 2020 Democrats Learned to Love Ethanol”. Politico. March 5, 2019. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/05/2020-democrats-ethanol-225517
[2] Energy Factor “The Fit, Fat, Fantastic Green Machine” Energy Factor by Exxon Mobile, June 19, 2017. https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/science-technology/fat-fit-algae-biofuel/
[3] Garrett Hardin. “The Tragedy of the Commons” Science, December 13, 1968. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243
[4] Jeff Tollefson. “Iron-Dumping Ocean Experiment Sparks Contriversy” Scientific American, May 24, 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy/
[5] Most of the assessment I provide in what follows can be found in this brief pdf. document “Why geoengineering is not a solution to the climate problem”, published by Climate Analytics, December 2, 2018. https://climateanalytics.org/publications/2018/why-geoengineering-is-not-a-solution-to-the-climate-problem/
