Geoengineering – Don’t Even Go There

Stop the madness before it even starts.  First, I must admit that I don’t understand exactly how it works but there are many scientists that are very wary of this.  From what I understand, aerosols are injected or sprayed into the clouds to somehow reflect the sun’s rays back so they don’t reach the earth.  That will help cool our planet to thwart the climate crisis. 

Heaven forbid that we actually do the obvious and stop using fossil fuels and massively reduce our consumption of soooo many goods that we don’t need.  Yes, those goods are convenient.  But, people can learn to live without them and adapt to a new lifestyle of counting their carbon footprint.  Hasn’t technology gotten us into enough trouble already?  And, I agree, there are technological advances that I use and don’t want to give up, that being our ability to communicate with everyone on the planet through the Internet and access to a seemingly infinite pool of knowledge.  There are medical advances that need to be protected.   But, everything else has to go.  As Richard Smith talks about in his article in Truthout on November 12, 2014, “Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative and the Jobs bs. Environment Dilemma,” we need to deice what we keep.

Let me stop that detour and get back to the original topic of geoengineering.  What if they do employ this tactic and the sun never shines again.  That is my biggest fear.  Hmm, . . . we do need the sun for some things . . . LIKE TO GROW FOOD.  Yes, solar panels are another thing . . . but we need food first.  They, and who is the “they” we can only guess . . . some corporate interests in fossil fuels, I would imagine.  They want to keep the economic machine going and reducing our consumption would only slow that down . . . or eliminate it so that we would have to create another system.

Bill McKibben recently wrote an article about this called, “Way Too Soon to Hack the Sky,” in the New Yorker on February 18, 2021.  The article details a test that is planned in Sweden with some Harvard scientists to use some balloon to get aerosols of calcium carbonate and sulfates into the stratosphere.  While this is just an initial test of planning how to get the aerosols up there, McKibben states we can only assume there will be more.  He mentions that the new Biden administration is pushing a new climate agenda, and we should be focused on that and not aerosols.  The next decade will demonstrate how serious we are tackling the climate crisis with reduced consumption and a new solar and wind energy infrastructure.  And, that is all we have is about nine years to do something major to stop the climate crisis.

McKibben states how ironic it is that Sweden has been chosen, which is the home of Greta Thunberg, who is really responsible for calling all the leaders of the global community out at the climate meetings for doing nothing about the climate crisis.  She also called the world’s attention to the climate crisis.  Harvard is facilitating these tests and has refused to divest from fossil fuels.  As McKibben states, “It’s an ominous moment in the planet’s history—and one we should back away from for now.”  McKibben also brings up Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, “Under a White Sky.”  That title makes it sound like a blue sky is not going to return.

Geoengineering . . . scary stuff.

Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma

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