This is the way geoengineering is like a pizza. Imagine a fully loaded pizza, dripping with luscious high fat cheese. But you have elevated cholesterol and are at risk of a heart attack if you don’t bring your cholesterol level down. The doctor gives you a cholesterol medicine, and there is that pizza, smelling so wonderfully. Do you think, “I should just have a salad.” or “Now I’m on the medication! Woo Hoo! I can have another slice!”
Concerns on both sides of the contentious issues surrounding geoengineering technology recognize that humans, if given a chance, will go for the pizza. One side of the argument says that climate change is an engineering problem, and we can hack the planet and adjust the atmosphere until all is well and we are safe. The other side sees geoengineering causing massive changes in the way the earth grows food, and postulates billions of climate change refugees, as large, fertile areas of the earth become barren. Climate change will do this over time, but geoengineering? That will crack the atmosphere like an egg breaking.
What exactly is geoengineering? Engineers are working on technologies that will slow or reverse the consequences of climate change. These are two basic types: carbon dioxide removal, or CDR—this tech removes emissions and greenhouse gases. The second type is solar radiation management, or SRM. This tech reduces the amount of solar energy warming the planet.
The Paris climate control agreements, at this time the best ideas and plans to mitigate the effects of climate change on the planet, have a goal of no more than 2 degrees or less increase in the temperature of the planet. Many engineers believe that goal will not be reached without some form of geoengineering.
Two concerns are at the top of a long list of concerns regarding efforts to reduce or reverse climate change. Do we understand the effects of a single change introduced into a complex system? Does complexity itself predict that we cannot know the consequences of a single change introduced into a system of great complexity, such as the atmosphere of the earth? And, second, how will geoengineering change human behavior? Because the proper, long term solution must be human behavior change. Climate change is driven by human behavior. And we love our pizza very much.
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