Geoengineering: Testing the Waters
by Naomi Klein
Published on Monday, October 29, 2012 by The New York Times
(Photo: Jacob Escobedo)For almost 20 years, I’ve been spending time on a craggy stretch
of British Columbia’s shoreline called the Sunshine Coast. This summer, I had
an experience that reminded me why I love this place, and why I chose to have a
child in this sparsely populated part of the world.
It was 5 a.m. and my
husband and I were up with our 3-week-old son. Looking out at the ocean, we
spotted two towering, black dorsal fins: orcas, or killer whales. Then two
more. We had never seen an orca on the coast, and never heard of their coming
so close to shore. In our sleep-deprived state, it felt like a miracle, as if
the baby had wakened us to make sure we didn’t miss this rare visit.
The possibility that
the sighting may have resulted from something less serendipitous did not occur
to me until two weeks ago, when I read reports of a bizarre ocean experiment
off the islands of Haida Gwaii, several hundred miles from where we spotted the
orcas swimming.
There, an American
entrepreneur named Russ George dumped 120 tons of iron dust off the hull of a
rented fishing boat; the plan was to create an algae bloom that would sequester
carbon and thereby combat climate
change.
Mr. George is one of a
growing number of would-be geoengineers who advocate high-risk, large-scale
technical interventions that would fundamentally change the oceans and skies in
order to reduce the effects of global warming. In addition to Mr. George’s
scheme to fertilize the ocean with iron, other geoengineering strategies under
consideration include pumping sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere to
imitate the cooling effects of a major volcanic eruption and “brightening”
clouds so they reflect more of the sun’s rays back to space.
The risks are huge.
Ocean fertilization could trigger dead zones and toxic tides. And multiple
simulations have predicted that mimicking the effects of a volcano would
interfere with monsoons in Asia and Africa, potentially threatening water and
food security for billions of people.
So far, these
proposals have mostly served as fodder for computer models and scientific
papers. But with Mr. George’s ocean adventure, geoengineering has decisively
escaped the laboratory. If Mr. George’s account of the mission is to be
believed, his actions created an algae bloom in an area half of the size of
Massachusetts that attracted a huge array of aquatic life, including whales
that could be “counted by the score.”
When I read about the
whales, I began to wonder: could it be that the orcas I saw were on their way
to the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet that had descended on Mr. George’s bloom?
The possibility, unlikely though it is, provides a glimpse into one of the
disturbing repercussions of geoengineering: once we start deliberately
interfering with the earth’s climate systems — whether by dimming the sun or
fertilizing the seas — all natural events can begin to take on an unnatural
tinge. An absence that might have seemed a cyclical change in migration
patterns or a presence that felt like a miraculous gift suddenly feels
sinister, as if all of nature were being manipulated behind the scenes.
Most news reports
characterize Mr. George as a “rogue” geoengineer. But what concerns me, after
researching the subject for two years for a forthcoming book on climate change,
is that far more serious scientists, backed by far deeper pockets, appear
poised to actively tamper with the complex and unpredictable natural systems
that sustain life on earth — with huge potential for unintended consequences.
In 2010, the chairman
of the House Committee on Science and Technology recommended more research into
geoengineering; the British government has begun to spend public money in the
field.
Bill Gates has
funneled millions of dollars into geoengineering research. And he has invested
in a company, Intellectual Ventures, that is developing at least two
geoengineering tools: the “StratoShield,” a 19-mile-long hose suspended by
helium balloons that would spew sun-blocking sulfur dioxide particles into the
sky and a tool that can supposedly blunt the force of hurricanes.
THE appeal is easy to
understand. Geoengineering offers the tantalizing promise of a climate change
fix that would allow us to continue our resource-exhausting way of life,
indefinitely. And then there is the fear. Every week seems to bring more
terrifying climate news, from reports of ice sheets melting ahead of schedule
to oceans acidifying far faster than expected. At the same time, climate change
has fallen so far off the political agenda that it wasn’t mentioned once during
any of the three debates between the presidential candidates. Is it any wonder
that many are pinning their hopes on a break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency
option that scientists have been cooking up in their labs?
But with rogue
geoengineers on the loose, it is a good time to pause and ask, collectively,
whether we want to go down the geoengineering road. Because the truth is that
geoengineering is itself a rogue proposition. By definition, technologies that
tamper with ocean and atmospheric chemistry affect everyone. Yet it is impossible
to get anything like unanimous consent for these interventions. Nor could any
such consent possibly be informed since we don’t — and can’t — know the full
risks involved until these planet-altering technologies are actually deployed.
While the United Nations’
climate negotiations proceed from the premise that countries must agree to a
joint response to an inherently communal problem, geoengineering raises a very
different prospect. For well under a billion dollars, a “coalition of the
willing,” a single country or even a wealthy individual could decide to take
the climate into its own hands. Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, an environmental
watchdog group, puts the problem like this: “Geoengineering says, ‘we’ll just
do it, and you’ll live with the effects.’ ”
The scariest
thing about this proposition is that models suggest that many of the people who
could well be most harmed by these technologies are already disproportionately
vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Imagine this: North America decides
to send sulfur into the stratosphere to reduce the intensity of the sun, in the
hopes of saving its corn crops — despite the real possibility of triggering
droughts in Asia and Africa. In short, geoengineering would give us (or some of
us) the power to exile huge swaths of humanity to sacrifice zones with a
virtual flip of the switch.
The geopolitical
ramifications are chilling. Climate change is already making it hard to know
whether events previously understood as “acts of God” (a freak heat wave in
March or a Frankenstorm on Halloween) still belong in that category. But if we
start tinkering with the earth’s thermostat — deliberately turning our oceans
murky green to soak up carbon and bleaching the skies hazy white to deflect the
sun — we take our influence to a new level. A drought in India will come to be
seen — accurately or not — as a result of a conscious decision by engineers on
the other side of the planet. What was once bad luck could come to be seen as a
malevolent plot or an imperialist attack.
There will be other
visceral, life-changing consequences. A study published this spring in
Geophysical Research Letters found that if we inject sulfur aerosols into the
stratosphere in order to dial down the sun, the sky would not only become
whiter and significantly brighter, but we would also be treated to more
intense, “volcanic” sunsets. But what kind of relationships can we expect to
have with those hyper-real skies? Would they fill us with awe — or with vague
unease? Would we feel the same when beautiful wild creatures cross our paths
unexpectedly, as happened to my family this summer? In a popular book on
climate change, Bill McKibben warned that we face “The End of Nature.” In the
age of geoengineering, we might find ourselves confronting the end of miracles,
too.
Mr. George and his
ocean-altering experiment provides an opportunity for public debate about an
issue essentially absent during the election cycle: What are the real solutions
to climate change? Wouldn’t it be better to change our behavior — to reduce our
use of fossil fuels — before we begin fiddling with the planet’s basic
life-support systems?
Unless we change
course, we can expect to hear many more reports about sun-shielders and ocean
fiddlers like Mr. George, whose iron dumping exploit did more than test a
thesis about ocean fertilization: it also tested the waters for future
geoengineering experiments. And judging by the muted response so far, the
results of Mr. George’s test are clear: geoengineers proceed, caution be
damned.
© 2012 The New York
Times
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and
syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include
the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the
Brand Bullies (which has just been re-published in a special 10th Anniversary Edition);
and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches
from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To
read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org.
You can follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.
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