Citizen Power

We already have Frankenfood — vegetables, fruit, and grains, genetically engineered to produce the maximum growth in the least amount of time with the maximum size, shape, etc., for transport. That’s why we get funny-tasting bananas and tasteless strawberries and squarish, pinkish tomatoes that travel well but taste like nothing. Is engineering of nature a trend we want to carry out on a planetary scale with our climate? We might not have a choice in the matter, say some scientists, due to America’s incredible procrastination on the crisis of climate change.

A “Frankenplanet” scenario might be necessary to take the existing C02 out of the atmosphere because we need to keep C02 levels at 350ppm and we are currently at 386ppm. Some scientists have suggested CCS — carbon capture and sequestration, to remove the C02. Some scientists are suggesting planting more plants to absorb the C02 and act as a “carbon sink”. Others are suggesting bio-char. Biochar is burning  biomass at low levels of heat to make charcoal and then burying it in the soil to take it out of the carbon cycle. It seems like a huge job, but it’s what NASA scientist James Hansen recommends. Those are the sane suggestions.

Other scientists are recommending even stranger things to save our atmosphere from runaway climate change, like geoengineering. That’s a very drastic remedy, but consider that we aren’t doing anything at all about climate change, you can see why it might be necessary. And, all this supposes that we stop putting C02 into the air. This is the biggest problem and it’s not happening. Geoengineering is back in the news recently in articles published by the on-line magazine Yale Environment 360 and by The Economist .

In the photo above you can see a “dead zone”. It’s a zone of water off our coasts that contains insufficient oxygen for fish and other life to exist in it. These dead zones are caused by pollution, runoff and too much carbon in the water, because the ocean is a big carbon sink too, and it’s nearly saturated with carbon. So these dead zones are popping up all over the world and they are getting bigger every year. Geoengineering seems like it might be necessary after all, if we are ever to stop the spread of these dead zones and to get carbon out of the air.

Geoengineering is not necessarily a crazy idea by itself, but when combined with this fact it is: we could avoid it by acting now on climate change, — but we won’t. Endless meetings around the world is not “action”. Action would involve an immediate cap on C02 with a target date that might seem impossible but isn’t, because we’d do it. But our government doesn’t have the cojones to do that, so scientists must work on ways to reflect sunlight on a planetary scale in case of an “emergency”. Quick, planet-wide sunlight reflection. That’s really the crazy part.

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