Climate Change
One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax – review
In One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax, Dipesh Chakrabarty examines human interrelatedness with, and responsibility within, the Earth System from a decolonial perspective. Drawing on a diverse range of disciplines, this book is a critical intervention that considers perspectival gaps and differences around the climate crisis, writes Elisabeth Wennerström.
One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax. Dipesh Chakrabarty. Brandeis University Press. 2023.
In One Planet, Many Worlds, Dipesh Chakrabarty addresses existing perspectival gaps and differences around the Earth System. This latter term can be understood from the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme’s definition (7) as a system integrated with the planet’s physical, chemical, and biological processes, of which humans are a part. Chakrabarty makes the “globe/planet distinction” (3) to navigate the climate crisis alongside the Earth System. The parallax is a helpful yet critical concept highlighting how appearances change depending on where the focal point rests.
Climate awareness is not a new concern, and the distribution of adverse climate impacts is highly unequal
The case in point: climate awareness is not a new concern, and the distribution of adverse climate impacts is highly unequal. Chakrabarty asserts that failures to act in relation to the Earth System are evidenced not only by the climate crisis but also in energy extraction politics (eg, 9 and19) and global justice debates (eg, 43 and 79). In contrast, he cites Kant’s emphasis on the “categorical imperative” to follow moral laws, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances. Arendt is further emphasised in the case for collective action. But in the Anthropocene, argues Chakrabarty (invoking Kant and Arendt on ethics), there are many signs of how the approach to addressing the climate crisis risks being “bereft of any sense of morality” (6).
Chakrabarty’s research interests intersect with themes in modern South Asian history and historiography, globalisation, climate change, and human history
As a leading scholar of postcolonial theory, comparative studies and the politics of modernity, Chakrabarty’s research interests intersect with themes in modern South Asian history and historiography, globalisation, climate change, and human history. This book demonstrates his extensive commitment to communicating change through a socio-historical narrative. The text is multidisciplinary in scope, moving freely between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. The critical premise is the need to learn from what may appear complex and from what is multifaceted.
He deconstructs “global warming” and “globalisation” by differentiating their relationship to the Earth System (eg, 19-21 and 56). Chakrabarty argues that the Earth System can be delimited as “a heuristic construct” when used in Earth System Science (ESS), wherein scholars’ focus on monitoring geological and biological factors (3). Chakrabarty finds a more fruitful discussion from a continued historicisation of “global histories” and the “geobiological history of the planet” in the different meanings of the “globe” – including “the 500-year-old entity brought into being by humans and their technologies of transport and communication…a human-told story with humans at its center” (3). The discussion includes the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter One), postcolonial historiographies around an “Earth system” (Chapter Two), and the need to reconcile what Chakrabarty refers to “as ‘the One and the Many’ problem that makes climate change such a difficult issue to tackle” (15) (Chapter Three).
The climate crisis is entangled with political factors, economic growth processes and capitalism, in part seen in the reverberating effects of natural resource extraction
Chakrabarty contends that the climate crisis is entangled with political factors, economic growth processes and capitalism, in part seen in the reverberating effects of natural resource extraction – what many scholars refer to as the Great Acceleration. Complementary notes expand such negotiations to Derrida’s “democracy to come” (60) and Hartog’s discussion on the elements of time and space that pose a particular political problem in the Anthropocene (22, 69, 74). Here, perspectives differ not only over whether Anthropocenic humans lie at the centre, but around the Earth System, which is one while also entailing many differentiated and interrelated processes (7-8). He states: “Any human sense of planetary emergency will have to negotiate the histories of those conflicted and entangled multiplicities” (16).
Many injustices and inequalities in the Anthropocene are repressed, too; he gives the example of how many longed for the pandemic to be over and for life to return to normal, yet when it came to vaccinations, this desire turned political (22). The pandemic shows, according to Chakrabarty, how we are “entwined with the geological – over human scales of time and space” (73).
He references Foucault’s biopolitics where “natural history remains, ultimately, separate from human history” (31), and more of a critique on modern political thought: “We are a minority form of life that has behaved over the last hundred or so years as though the planet was created so that only humans would thrive” (39). In contrast, the biologist Margulis combined three Greek words (hólos for “whole,” bíos for “life,” and óntos for “being”), in the understanding of the holobiont, the superorganism that hosts a myriad of other life, of which humans are a part (38).
Chakrabarty offers no essential framework to address the climate crisis. Still, he contends that the critical question remains how to navigate the present and respond alongside the Earth System.
Chakrabarty offers no essential framework to address the climate crisis. Still, he contends that the critical question remains how to navigate the present and respond alongside the Earth System. He suggests that multiple entry points for the reconfiguration of hegemonic “contemporaneity,” can be found in the writings of thinkers across disciplines – from philosophers, physicists and botanists to activists, marine biologists and anthropologists, including Hartog (69), Latour (71), Todd (95), Winter (96), Haraway (98), and Kimmerer (103). By deconstructing “the globe” he reimagines the contours of connective global histories, citing the impetus of “Haraway and Indigenous philosophers—to make kin, intellectually and across historical difference” (102). Charabarty’s text draws together all these ideas to unpack the asymmetrical patterns of time and space in the Earth System and make a case for global environmental justice. Overall, Chakrabarty’s work One Planet. Many Worlds makes a critical intervention on how to think about the climate crisis, deconstructing the present way of being within the Anthropocene.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Triff on Shutterstock.
Retired Social Worker Who Faced Two Years in Prison for Holding Up Sign Outside Climate Trial is Cleared
A retired social worker will not face prison for allegations of ‘contempt of court’, after holding up a sign outside a climate trial last year which stated: “Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience”.
The Government’s Solicitor General had applied to ‘commit’ climate activist Trudi Warner to prison, with initial hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice taking place last Thursday and today (Monday 22nd April). She faced up to two years in prison if the case went ahead.
The Defend Our Juries campaign, which aims to inform jurors of their right to acquit peaceful activists and defend those who do so, said a “vital precedent” has been established protecting protest rights outside courts.
A judge at the High Court this morning said Warner would not face a full hearing and refused the Government's attempt to try her for contempt of court, which could have meant two years in jail. The Government had claimed that Warner’s actions sought to illegally sway the jury during the climate protest trial.
The year-long battle follows an incident in March last year, when 69-year-old Warner held up a placard reminding jurors they had a right to give a verdict based on their conscience - a message that features on an historic plaque at the Old Bailey.
Delivering his judgement on the Government's application on Monday, Mr Justice Saini said: "The Solicitor General’s case does not disclose a reasonable basis for committal … It is fanciful to suggest that Ms Warner’s conduct [amounted to common law contempt]. Her placard simply summarised the principle of jury equity. Her conduct was consistent with information sharing. She was in essence a human billboard.”
Warner held her sign up outside a courtroom where people were on trial for protesting against the Government’s failure to tackle the climate crisis. London Court Judge Silas Reid had ruled that the defendants were not allowed to tell the jury why they were protesting and had banned them from mentioning the words “climate change” and “fuel poverty”. Three people have now gone to prison after defying his order, Defend Our Juries says.
Responding to the news, Good Law Project legal manager, Jennine Walker, said:“We are delighted that Trudi’s nightmare is over and she can get on with her life free from the fear of being imprisoned.
“Juries hold a special place in our legal system because they allow ordinary people to decide what is right and fair. When the state wants to exercise the greatest power it has - that of sending someone to prison - a jury can keep it in check. Trudi’s sign simply reminded jurors of that important right.
“Let's not forget why Trudi held up her sign. The UK Government is not doing enough to prevent the damage caused by global heating that is destroying people's homes and livelihoods. The law is not doing enough to hold the people and companies who are destroying our planet to account. Yet ordinary people who sound the alarm face prosecution.”
Before the hearing, a Defend our Juries spokesperson said the fact that Warner faced prison at all “should be enough to send a shudder down your spine.”
Warner’s cause has been taken up by hundreds of other activists, who have joined protests outside courtrooms across the country since she was arrested last year - many of them urging the police to arrest them.
The Background
Following Judge Reid’s orders, Trudi Warner protested outside the Inner London Crown Court with a placard, outlining what she said was principle of ‘jury equity’, in other words the right of a jury to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, even if a judge directs that there is no defence.
Trudi Warner was subsequently arrested for contempt of court. On 18 April, at the Royal Courts of Justice, the Solicitor General, Robert Courts MP, will apply for permission to commit Ms Warner to prison for her actions (known as ‘committal proceedings’). Ms Warner will be represented by Clare Montgomery KC.
From the 13th-21st April, hundreds of people gathered outside every Crown Court in England and Wales to mimic her actions and dare police to arrest them.
In February, 300 people handed in a letter inviting the Solicitor General to prosecute them too.
A spokesperson for the Defend Our Juries Campaign added last week: “This week, our message to the Government and courts is simple: Trudi Warner is not alone in asserting a fundamental principle of justice, if you are prosecuting Trudi Warner, you must prosecute us too.”
On Friday 12th April, Warner addressed a conference organised by Lawyers Are Responsible and Queen Mary University of London, attended by lawyers, academics, health workers and frontline climate activists.
Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur for environmental defenders, delivered a video address, telling attendees: “In January 2024, I was in London for a couple of days to meet with environmental defenders and Government representatives…
“I had received many concerning reports of the crackdown on environmental defenders in [other] countries. But I must say, I had not seen a situation as concerning as the one in the UK. Since [my last visit], the situation does not seem to have improved.”
That assessment may now be slightly tempered by today’s news.
A Defend Our Juries protest inside the Royal Courts of Justice, February 2024
The Defend Our Juries campaign aims “to bring to public attention the programme to undermine trial by jury in the context of those taking action to expose Government dishonesty and corporate greed.”
The group also seeks to highlight the "vital constitutional safeguard" that juries can acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, "irrespective of a judge’s direction that there is no available defence," a principle also known as ‘jury equity’ or ‘jury nullification‘.
And the organisers push to ensure all defendants are able to explain their actions "when their liberty is at stake, including by explaining their motivations and beliefs.”
Last August, 40 members of the public, including an Olympic gold medalist, a retired bus driver, a number of health professionals, a group of Quakers and a former government lawyer - who have all held up similar signs - wrote to the Solicitor General to say, “If you prosecute Trudi Warner, you should prosecute us too.”
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office told Byline Times last September: “Contempt of court is a serious matter and the power to issue proceedings is used sparingly. When investigating potential contempt issues, the Law Officers assess whether the evidential test for the specific form of contempt is met.
"In this case, the Law Officers considered the deliberate act of doing something that interferes or creates a real risk of interference with the administration of justice, and whether it is in the public interest to begin proceedings for contempt...It will now be a matter for the Court.”
Contempt of court is not technically a criminal offence, but it is punishable by imprisonment.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Climate Change Is Coming For Your Insurance
As Hurricane Ida approached New Orleans on a sticky August morning in 2021, Janet Tobias listened to the news, trying to decide if she should evacuate. While she packed, family members called to report they were stuck in fleeing traffic. Fueled by abnormally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the storm strengthened rapidly. As it began to pour, Tobias, who is in her sixties, decided she’d have to take her chances at home.
By the time the Category 4 storm made landfall, it was one of the strongest to ever hit Louisiana. It tore through the bayous, lashing boats ashore and splintering telephone poles. Tobias was terrified. Then the power went out. Alone in the darkness, all she could hear was the roar of the wind. “I never been that scared,” she says.
When the dim morning light finally broke, Tobias found she’d been comparatively lucky: Her porch railing was torn off, and eight windows were shattered.
In the days and weeks to come, her insurer, Americas Insurance Company, was slow to respond to her $5,000 claim. Like many other companies drawn to Louisiana by its generous government subsidies, Americas Insurance had grown rapidly, increasing its portfolio in the state by 552 percent over a decade. But in Ida’s aftermath, Tobias was one of more than half of its policyholders to file claims — and Americas Insurance didn’t have nearly enough liquidity to cover the $230 million in damages.
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Dutton’s nuclear push intended to delay climate action
The Coalition’s Peter Dutton has launched a push for nuclear power—but not because he expects it to come on-line any time soon. The move is a product of hostility to any serious increase in renewable energy such as solar and wind.
The AUKUS nuclear subs deal has also opened the door to Dutton. Labor’s support for AUKUS means it is downplaying the issues around nuclear waste and nuclear safety, since it already plans to acquire 11 nuclear reactors on board the subs.
Even on Dutton’s own claims a nuclear Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is more than ten years away. According to Dutton it would cost $5 billion for a small 470MW plant.
Because of its own appalling commitment to nuclear-fuelled warfare, Labor is wrongly focused solely on the logistical problems with nuclear energy. But it is right that nuclear doesn’t stack up on either cost or time.
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen claims it would cost around $387 billion to replace every Australian coal plant with SMRs—a technology that doesn’t exist commercially. One SMR has been built in Russia and one in China, both with capacities of less than 300MW.
A demonstration plant backed by Bill Gates in Wyoming with a proposed capacity of 345MW, a quarter of that of most coal-fired power plants, will cost $6 billion and won’t be ready until 2030—if it isn’t plagued by the delays and cost blow outs that have affected other Western nuclear efforts.
The most successful time frame in recent years to build a nuclear power plant was 16 years in the United Arab Emirates, which has no meaningful environmental laws or labour protections.
AGL’s Coopers Gap Wind Farm has a similar capacity at 453MW, cost six times less at $850 million, and took just two years to build.
Wind and solar are orders of magnitude cheaper and faster to construct, without the nuclear waste or safety issues.
Nuclear power plants have a history of accidents—and any disaster can carry catastrophic consequences.
There is no safe limit for exposure to radioactive material, which can cause cancers, auto-immune issues, fertility problems and death.
The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths, while the Fukushima meltdown a decade ago saw Japan “on the verge” of having to evacuate Tokyo’s 50 million people.
Labor’s renewable transition
So why is Dutton proposing nuclear power? It is mainly a climate delaying tactic, to keep aging coal-fired power stations open beyond their expected life, and oppose Labor’s support for renewables.
Promoting nuclear power also allows the Nationals to continue to campaign locally against the wind turbines and new transmission lines needed for the large scale renewable roll-out, whilst still claiming they support net zero emissions by 2050.
A large part of Dutton’s job will simply be poking holes in Labor’s story, which is littered with failures.
Labor says it wants renewable energy to provide 82 per cent of Australia’s power by 2030. This was based on a projection about what would happen if the government simply left it to private companies to invest in energy generation, with most of the country’s coal power plants due to be replaced.
But a collapse in investment saw only $1.5 billion in new projects confirmed in 2023, down from $6.5 billion the previous year. This needs to rise dramatically to meet their targets. Labor is hoping its new “capacity investment scheme” will speed things up.
But already NSW Labor is looking to spend up to $400 million of public money a year to keep the Eraring coal-fired power station running.
And far from Labor meeting its reduction targets, carbon emissions increased last year by 3.6 million tonnes.
Dutton’s campaign for nuclear power is also a pitch to workers in fossil fuel industries over jobs, even if these will never materialise.
Labor still lacks a plan for workers in the existing fossil fuel industry.
Albanese’s latest tack was the promise of $1 billion for solar panel manufacturing, some of it on the site of the decommissioned Liddell coal power station in NSW.
Albanese made hints that the plan could provide regional jobs wherever coal power is shutting down—but there were no guarantees and few details.
Dutton’s nuclear push needs to be opposed, but Labor offers no alternative when it is paying lip service to climate action, at the same time as overseeing a massive expansion of fossil fuels.
Since the federal election it has approved five coal mines that will create almost 150 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
We need public investment in renewable energy with job guarantees for existing fossil fuel workers if we are going to transition at the speed the climate crisis requires.
By Chris Breen
The post Dutton’s nuclear push intended to delay climate action first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Latest European Union rules provide no serious reform or increased capacity to meet the actual challenges ahead
It’s Wednesday and we have discussion on a few topics today. The first relates to the new agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council that was announced on February 10, 2024, which purports to reform the fiscal rules structure that has crippled the Member States of the EMU since inception. The reality is…
The Conservative Party’s Campaign Against Sadiq Khan is Based on a ‘Barefaced Lie’ Which is Designed to Harvest Voters’ Data
The Conservative Party has been accused of running a campaign against Sadiq Khan which is based on a “barefaced lie” which will “panic” Londoners into handing over their personal data.
Londoners will go to the polls on May 2 to choose their next mayor. Polls suggest that the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan is the strong favourite to win against a challenge from his Conservative rival Susan Hall.
However, Khan’s team fear that a “desperate” campaign by Hall, based on wrongly suggesting that Khan has committed to implement pay-per-mile road charging, could allow her to win the contest.
Proposals for pay-per-mile road charging have been discussed in the past by City Hall, including by Khan’s Conservative predecessor Boris Johnson. Rishi Sunak was also reportedly a previous supporter of such plans.
However, Khan has repeatedly ruled out bringing in pay-per-mile charging, saying again last month that he had “categorically” ruled out any such plans.
Despite these repeated denials, Hall’s campaign have sent out leaflets to Londoners which are designed to look exactly like driving penalty notices and which contain the text “DRIVING CHARGE NOTICE. DO NOT IGNORE. WARNING. THE MAYOR OF LONDON IS PLANNING ANOTHER TAX ON DRIVERS. IF YOUR’RE NOT PREPARED TO PAY THEN SCAN THE QR CODE BELOW”..
Anyone scanning the code will be taken to a website requesting they fill out a “petition” against the new “tax”, which then collects their data.
Hall’s opponents accused her of trying to “panic” Londoners into handing over their information.
“The Conservatives will panic people with this sort of leaflet - it really isn't acceptable” the Liberal Democrat’s London Mayor candidate Rob Blackie said.
Khan’s campaign accused Hall of peddling a “barefaced lie” in a “desperate” bid to win votes.
“These leaflets peddle a barefaced lie” a London Labour spokesperson told Byline Times.
“The Tories are clearly desperate and have resorted to deliberately misleading Londoners. It is nothing more than scaremongering.
“Sadiq has repeatedly, categorically, ruled out pay-per-mile for as long as he is mayor. Londoners will not be duped by these Tory lies."
Political campaigns are required to clearly label their campaign material to alert voters to their source.
However, Hall’s leaflets contain no reference to Susan Hall on the front of the leaflet, and only contain a single small print reference to Hall at the bottom of the reverse side.
The Conservative Party is not mentioned at all aside from a small print reference to 'CCHQ' which is an abbreviation for Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
The linked website does contain a small print reference to the Conservative Party. However, many Londoners receiving the leaflets are unlikely to realise the source of the supposed 'Driving Charge Notice' they have received.
A spokesperson for the Information Commissioners' Office said, "We are aware of issues raised in relation to campaign leaflets and are considering those concerns.
"If a candidate or party asks you to complete a survey or petition, they should be clear how that data will be used in future.
"In many cases, it won't be appropriate for the party or candidate to then repurpose that information for political campaigning."
Independent fact checking organisation Full Fact said in a statement that they were "concerned" by Hall's leaflets.
"We're concerned about these leaflets from the Conservative Party that some of our supporters are receiving through their doors. Deceptive campaign practices can mislead the public during elections - and that’s not on.
"Every voter deserves good information. This is why we’re demanding improvements to the rules around the transparency of campaign materials..."
The leaflets are the latest in a series of misleading claims made by the Conservative Party’s campaign in London. Last month the party deleted a video wrongly claiming that London had become “a crime capital of the world” after it was revealed that it contained a video clip of a terror scare which took place in New York, rather than in London.
Multiple tweets sent out by Hall and the party on X have also been labeled with 'community notes' by users due to misleading claims they have made.
The Conservative party’s former Deputy Chair Lee Anderson was also suspended from the party in February after wrongly suggesting that Khan was in the control of Islamists who were his “mates”.
Byline Times contacted Susan Hall’s campaign to request an explanation, or justification, for the use of their “Driving Charge Notice” leaflets as well as their broader claims about Khan’s plans, but did not receive a response.
A Tidal Wetland Restoration of Epic Proportions
Water may be life, but without salt, the human body cannot retain its benefits. And for thousands of years, a stretch of coastline south of San Francisco has been a vital source of salt.
The South Bay Salt Ponds, as they’re now known, were once thousands of acres of thriving tidal marsh, which formed a natural barrier against regional flooding and provided an important stopover site for migratory birds and habitat for estuary-dwelling flora and fauna. The Ohlone peoples historically harvested salt from the area’s natural deposits, a resource later exploited first by German immigrant John Johnson in the mid-1800s and then by salt-harvesting companies including Cargill, which still operates in the area.
Today, saltwater evaporation ponds sprawl across the area, forming a man-made waterscape that resembles an artist’s palette — courtesy of saline-loving microorganisms that give each pond its richly saturated hue.
The post A Tidal Wetland Restoration of Epic Proportions appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Millions of simulations show that media companies have too much time on their hands
It’s Wednesday and I discuss a number of topics today. First, the ‘million simulations’ that Bloomberg apparently think show that there is an impending US bond market rout. Second, the way in which neoliberal-inspired legislation ensures the private energy providers can gouge prices and make huge profits in the face of a state-owned alternative. Third,…
How Basic Income Can Support Climate Tech Solutions
The evolution of climate action has reflected the need for affordable options. Universal basic income (UBI) has the unique opportunity to empower everyone to change the world. The warming environment necessitates rapid development and deployment of climate innovations. UBI can provide the accessibility that is crucial to the widespread adoption of solutions like solar panels, […]
Climate Engineering: Doubling Down on Bad Habits
by Gary Gardner
Let’s not mess with such perfection. (Wikimedia)
Social psychologists tell us it takes about 66 days to form a new habit. In my experience that’s only half true. Sixty-six days to form a good habit, yes, but about 66 hours to form a bad one. If I reach for a donut at breakfast, then do the same the next two days, I seal the deal and establish a habit of bad eating. And the dynamic has an insidious way of spreading. Soon I skip workouts, watch too much TV, and succumb to other indulgences. Poor choices beget poor choices, in a rapidly descending spiral.
We might frame climate engineering in the same way, as the latest in a downward spiral of bad economic choices. Our original sin was committing uncritically to growth. Then we doubled down using the power of fossil fuels. Now we flirt with climate engineering, a set of technologies that are expensive, risky, and often unproven, as an extension of our fossil energy addiction. Down the slippery slope we go.
Breaking our bad habit requires that we adopt a strict fossil-fuel-free diet. But we’ve reached a point where may also need some forms of climate engineering—limited and relatively benign—to restore stability to our climate and to reduce climate damage, especially in the most vulnerable regions. In our addiction to growth and fossil fuels we’ve wrought a vexing ethical tangle that will be difficult to sort through.
What is Climate Engineering?
Climate engineering, also known as geoengineering, is an umbrella term covering a broad set of technologies for avoiding dangerous levels of global heating. Analysts generally split the field into two families of technologies, each with a different approach to addressing warming.
Solar radiation modification (SRM) is a strategy for deflecting away the sun’s rays to reduce the heating of our planet. Scientists imagine increasing the albedo (reflectivity) of the earth, say by covering glaciers in Antarctica with artificial snow or planting high-albedo varieties of barley, corn, wheat, or other crops. More exotic options include spraying reflective sulphates into the stratosphere or placing orbiting mirrors in space. Proponents of SRM note that most of the options are relatively inexpensive, at tens of billions of dollars per year for each degree C of cooling in the sulphate-spraying option. And it would provide quick relief from rising temperatures. Other advocates may see SRM as an easy way to skirt emissions reductions and to maintain economies run by fossil fuels. And SRM has serious downsides, described below.
Forms of Solar Radiation Management. (Chelsea Thompson, NOAA/CIRES)
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches would pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thinning the blanket of heat-trapping CO2 molecules. CDR is a testament to the human imagination, featuring more than a dozen methods of removing excess carbon. Some are nature-based, like planting trees over massive areas. Others are mechanical, like direct air capture (DAC), which uses giant fan-like devices to draw air through adsorbent filters that isolate the CO2, concentrating it for sequestration. Still others alter marine ecosystems by encouraging the growth of carbon-rich plankton (for example, by scattering iron filings through the ocean). The plankton then sink to the ocean floor for a natural burial. All these CDR methods have drawbacks, whether ecological, political, financial, or ethical.
Which approach is best, SRM or CDR? In truth, the question is premature. Before considering any merits of climate engineering, we must tackle the little matter of emissions reductions. This is the elephant in the room in many climate engineering discussions.
The multiple technologies proposed for tinkering with the climate can easily dazzle us. But gee-whiz excitement may blind us to an important fact. None of these solutions addresses the core driver of the climate crisis, the emission of greenhouse gases. None is a complete solution to our climate challenge.
All climate engineering approaches are workarounds that sidestep dealing with emissions. Every one is a temptation to avoid the painful task of building new, carbon-neutral economies. Each makes at best an incomplete contribution to solving the climate crisis.
An honest, fully formed approach to climate policy requires that emissions reductions be not only present, but at the forefront. Climate engineering should play only a distant, secondary role. Even then, only the most benign, ecologically friendly options should be considered.
Fundamental Failure
Remember that geoengineering strategies would not even figure in the climate conversation if humanity had met its responsibility for emissions reductions decades ago. But we didn’t. Between 2000 and 2022, the world’s economies emitted enormous quantities of carbon, equal to 41 percent of the carbon emitted back to 1750. This growth-driven surge boosted concentrations of atmospheric carbon from 370 to 418 parts per million).
Carbon sequestration as nature intended. (Niko photos, Unsplash)
The surge has also tied our hands: Atmospheric concentrations are now so great that emissions reductions alone cannot provide for the 1.5-degree (Celsius) limit on temperature rise set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Nor are they likely to keep us below 2.0 degrees of temperature increase. In fact, most IPCC scenarios for meeting temperature goals assume some use of CDR technologies to sequester carbon. And the U.S. government seems intent on exploring climate engineering, having provided billions of dollars in subsidies to help boost direct air capture technologies.
In fact, the longer serious mitigation efforts are delayed, the more the mercury rises and the greater the pressure to use climate engineering. More carbon indulgence coaxes us toward more extreme tinkering with Earth systems. Bad habits breed bad habits.
In sum, we err in framing climate engineering as a set of wonder technologies arriving just in time to save us. Instead, they are like crutches, temporary assists that support the hard work of rehabilitation. Our hard work, our rehabilitation of the climate, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a serious way.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
As helpful as some limited geoengineering practices may be, policymakers and the public must be clear-eyed about the risks involved. The list of risks is long. Here are just a few:
Rogue actors—What if a nation frustrated over feeble progress in cutting global emissions decided to take climate action into its own hands? It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem given the relative simplicity and affordability of sulphate spraying, at least for larger economies. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future imagined just such a scenario, with India suffering mass deaths due to heat and responding by essentially skywriting with cannisters of sulphate. The government, perhaps understandably, frames an exotic and risky venture as necessary to protect its suffering people.
Long-term commitment—SRM in particular could introduce a major new risk. If nations start to reflect away solar rays without serious emissions reductions, they essentially commit to SRM indefinitely. Stopping the practice after a buildup of carbon would produce a spike in global temperature that many species likely could not adapt to. Who has confidence that nations would fund SRM solutions indefinitely to avoid such an outcome?
Would climate engineering be in the interest of this young African? (Seth Doyle, Unsplash)
Unintended consequences—Some measures to restrain global temperature increases could have detrimental effects at the regional or local levels. For example, some forms of solar engineering could cause changes in rainfall in parts of Africa or to the monsoon in India. What safeguards can we put in place to protect vulnerable regions? Are people in those regions part of decision-making on climate engineering?
Resource intensive—For CDR technologies, global-level interventions will require tremendous resources, both financial and physical. Even tree planting is no panacea. Planting 900 million hectares in trees would require the area of 2.74 Indias, raising questions about whose land would be used. Even then, the trees would remove around 8 billion tons of CO2 equivalent. This is just a fraction of the 52 billion tons of CO2 equivalent emitted each year. And young trees absorb far less carbon than mature trees, so the bulk of these gains would not be realized until the second half of the century.
Unproven—In 2023, a panel in the U.N. climate bureaucracy shocked the emerging CDR community when it declared carbon removal technologies “technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale.” It also said that carbon removal poses “unknown environmental and social risks.” Even Ocean Visions, which is bullish on marine-based methods of CDR, acknowledges that many are untried and have unknown effects. This, even as the global community needs climate action urgently.
Finding the Moral Middle
If we were tasked in 1990 to lay out an ethics of climate action, a single sentence would have sufficed. Cut greenhouse gas emissions as broadly and quickly as possible, starting with the biggest emitters. But economic growth and technological developments since 2000 have complicated the picture considerably and put us in an ethical bind. Navigating our choices requires ramping up our commitment to emissions reductions while carefully considering other actions that would keep temperature increases under two degrees.
On curbing emissions, we’ll need to be much less permissive than we’ve been in the past two decades. Electric vehicles, solar panels, and other “clean” technologies are part of this effort, but they carry their own moral hazard. It’s tempting to believe that adopting technological fixes is the extent of our responsibility. But we know that technological solutions alone often backfire and can produce more of the very harms we are trying to reduce.
A good effort in itself, but even a trillion trees wouldn’t finish the emissions-mopping job. (Eyoel Kahssey, Unsplash)
The most direct, broad-based, and cheapest way to cut emissions is to stop the economic growth that fuels it. Policy efforts focused here could yield substantial returns. Some of the draft bills from CASSE’s Steady State Economy Act project (such as the Mileage Fee Act, to be introduced next week) would be helpful steps in this direction.
With a serious commitment to emissions reduction, we can turn to mopping up as much excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere as is safely possible. Climate engineering solutions should be those that mesh with ecological restoration, like tree planting, restoring wetlands, and designating “blue carbon” areas. The simultaneous contribution to biodiversity conservation makes such efforts a systems solution to the climate crisis. This stands in contrast to the single-issue, reductionist focus that characterizes many climate engineering approaches.
We got into the climate crisis by relying on tunnel-visioned engineering solutions. Let’s not double down on that mistake by tinkering with the climate. Greta Thunberg captures the idea: “A crisis created by lack of respect for nature will … not be solved by taking that lack of respect to the next level.”
Instead, let’s respect nature—and ourselves—and abandon the naïve notions of perpetual growth. We have the option of the steady state economy to fall back upon. It’s the adult thing to do.
Gary Gardner is Managing Editor at CASSE.
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