Resisting the dangerous allure of global warming technofixes

If geoengineering becomes the chosen response, the obvious question is, who is going to make decisions that are truly global in scope, and how? Who, if anyone, will be approving, overseeing, and policing any use of geoengineering? If the time comes when the Earth needs a sunshade, there must be a guarantee, once started, that it will continue for centuries. If the monsoon fails following some geoengineering effort, there must be some authority to mediate the dispute about what caused it or compensate those who claim damages. As Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider has suggested, such claims are inevitable, so it would be unwise to do this without some plan for “no-fault climate disaster insurance” to provide compensation.

And how is it going to be possible to distinguish plain old bad weather from climatological warfare? In a geoengineered world, a catastrophic hurricane or devastating drought can generate suspicion, paranoia, and conflict.

The problems of the planetary era clearly require some manner of global governance, but our first attempts at this have failed miserably. Gus Speth, the former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and an early leader on global problems, describes the current state of affairs bluntly: “The climate convention is not protecting climate, the biodiversity convention is not protecting biodiversity, the desertification convention is not preventing desertification, and even the older and stronger Convention of the Law of the Sea is not protecting fisheries.”

The planetary system binds us more tightly in a common destiny than the economic system. No one will be secure in a world with runaway warming. Yet governments that willingly concede some of their sovereignty to promote economic expansion will not do the same to protect planetary systems.

In the absence of some means to arrive at a collective decision and provide oversight, all sorts of conflicts and tensions are almost inevitable. What happens if a single country decides to opt for planetary manipulation instead of reducing its emissions? What if other countries object that the project is too risky? If it becomes possible to scrub carbon dioxide from the air and reduce carbon dioxide levels, the question of who gets to choose what kind of climate we want and whether nations should pay to remove their share of past emissions could spark serious disputes.

Until a shift in their rhetoric on climate change six months ago, Russian leaders, for example, were inclined to an upbeat assessment of the benefits of climate change and quick to claim land along with any oil, gas, and minerals lying beneath the no-longer-icebound Arctic. Even if their new-found concern about future warming proves genuine, the Russians might balk at a plan to reduce carbon dioxide levels to 280 to 300 parts per million - a target that would return CO2 levels to what is indisputably the safe range for the climate system. Climate scientist Ken Caldeira judged that it isn’t far-fetched to imagine “some kind of arms race of geoengineering where one country is trying to cool the planet and another is trying to warm the planet”.

The greatest temptation is the naïve hope for a quick fix that will spare us from the difficult challenges of cutting greenhouse gas emissions or finding a way to live together on a shared planet. Even if one of these geoengineering schemes does pan out, be assured that it isn’t going to prove either simple or a “solution”.