⚙️ Is it Now Time to Geoengineer?
Last weekend, having been slapped by the UK’s devastating environmental rollback, I logged onto my Twitter newsfeed to the joyful news that Chris Packham has decided it is now time to break the law. The not-so-subtle streak of desperation that runs through today’s environmental commentary had caught me; I closed Chris and opened a tab on Geoengineering. I don’t want to descend into the rabbit hole of specific techniques. There’s plenty of that online. Instead, I want to start with “well, what if we could win” as that was what I wanted when I first opened the tab… to ‘win’ this climate struggle.
Well. How would we win?
The definition, “the large-scale manipulation of Earth’s systems central to controlling climate”, suggests this is no small feat. And though it’s not easy to dismiss the slight nag that mankind’s playful approach to solar radiation sounds an awful lot like the famous fable of Icarus and his hubris, when you’re desperate, it’s possible. Besides, haven’t humankind always been ecosystem engineers? Leaving the mechanistic undertones of engineering aside, it is true that from the bushland in Tanzania to the great forest garden that is the Amazon, to the famous bogs of Ireland, the human handprint is everywhere. So, if we were able to start tweaking things just a couple of scales up with the same precision, would that really be so different?
Maybe not. If we could say, with confidence, that our manipulating the atmosphere was not going to upset any of the vast array of planetary systems interacting at these heights, then maybe we could win. Yet, if the plug on our solution were to be pulled momentarily, climate breakdown would be rapid. So geoengineering remains a maybe victory. Indefinitely.
Suring up this victory becomes harder with the floor – our global governance strategy – being so shaky. Out of character, it’s the US who are currently slimming the opportunity for sensible strategy. Recent moves to place Geoengineering under the UNEA (United Nations Environmental Assembly) have been rejected by both the US and the Saudis. Geoengineering, as it is under the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), brings neither the 8 other planetary boundaries nor countless social boundaries into the discussion.
Which brings us to the last consideration. If we had devised a thermostat system capable of regulating the world’s climate, what incentive would there be to enact meaningful change in our behaviour toward each other or the environment? Instead, would it not be the full stop to the “Conquer Nature” narrative? Done and dusted. Literally. Enter Wall-E world.
Practice: With all we now know about the inherent uncertainty in complex systems, do we really believe we could ‘win’?
Our role: Though we’ve always been ‘ecosystem engineers’, this engineering (or maybe participation) has largely been in the right scale and right relationship. How do we interweave these tangents of place and purpose back into the conversation?
Governance: How can we place geoengineering under a global governance body (with teeth) that can levy a systems viewpoint?
Narrative: If we really did win, who would really be winning?
Looking through my adventure into the subject, and the sense of desperation that drove it, my sense is that we should be applying our energy to evidencing the speed and power of regenerative climate solutions be them agricultural, economic, or social. Scrabbling for the next patchwork, short-term solution perpetuates the problem. Maybe it’s time to stop engineering ourselves from one disaster to the next.