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    Camille Landu Week 6

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    sijemenvole
    This document discusses geoengineering as a potential Plan B to address climate change. It outlines three catastrophic scenarios if climate change is not limited to under 2 degrees Celsius. The document raises concerns that geoengineering techniques have not been adequately tested and may only provide a short term solution. It also notes issues around regulation and international tensions that could arise from unilateral geoengineering efforts. While acknowledging geoengineering may be a last resort, the document argues approaches that work with nature like reforestation and agroecology are more effective and ethical solutions to reducing carbon emissions.

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    Camille Landu Week 6

    Uploaded by

    sijemenvole
    8 views3 pages
    This document discusses geoengineering as a potential Plan B to address climate change. It outlines three catastrophic scenarios if climate change is not limited to under 2 degrees Celsius. The document raises concerns that geoengineering techniques have not been adequately tested and may only provide a short term solution. It also notes issues around regulation and international tensions that could arise from unilateral geoengineering efforts. While acknowledging geoengineering may be a last resort, the document argues approaches that work with nature like reforestation and agroecology are more effective and ethical solutions to reducing carbon emissions.

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    This document discusses geoengineering as a potential Plan B to address climate change. It outlines three catastrophic scenarios if climate change is not limited to under 2 degrees Celsius. The document raises concerns that geoengineering techniques have not been adequately tested and may only provide a short term solution. It also notes issues around regulation and international tensions that could arise from unilateral geoengineering efforts. While acknowledging geoengineering may be a last resort, the document argues approaches that work with nature like reforestation and agroecology are more effective and ethical solutions to reducing carbon emissions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    8 views3 pages

    Camille Landu Week 6

    Uploaded by

    sijemenvole
    This document discusses geoengineering as a potential Plan B to address climate change. It outlines three catastrophic scenarios if climate change is not limited to under 2 degrees Celsius. The document raises concerns that geoengineering techniques have not been adequately tested and may only provide a short term solution. It also notes issues around regulation and international tensions that could arise from unilateral geoengineering efforts. While acknowledging geoengineering may be a last resort, the document argues approaches that work with nature like reforestation and agroecology are more effective and ethical solutions to reducing carbon emissions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    Discussion paper

    A common discourse expressed by environmental activists is that there is no Planet B.

    A statement that may not remain true since scientists might have a plan B called

    geo-engineering. There are three catastrophic scenarii. First, mankind does not manage to

    limit climate change under 2 degrees Celsius and will face several consequences. Secondly,

    we manage to be under 2 degrees Celsius but the consequences are still severe. Thirdly, even

    though we stop burning fossil energy the planet is heating by itself. That is to say, there is in

    the frozen soils of Canada and Siberia a very powerful greenhouse gas: methane. For the

    moment methane is locked thanks to permafrost but since the Arctic region is melting the

    permafrost will not be effective. If metal is released our efforts to tackle climate change

    would be annihilated. (France Culture, 2021) The only solution that we should have left is

    geo-engineering that consists in modifying artificial climate to change the Earth temperature.

    For instance, we could send sulfur into the atmosphere, modify sun rays, and other

    techniques. However these techniques have not been tested on a bigger scale and we do not

    know the consequences and whether it is sustainable or just for a short term period. Using

    geo- engineering should be on a short term basis like ten years just to win time. Nonetheless

    we would need lots of financial support in order to make it work, and it could be one of the

    most significant problems.

    Economically speaking, the problem would be lobbies. Lobbies such as oil ones.

    participate in financing the techniques for geo-engineering. As they want to win time to keep

    today's consumption system, their presence in the geo-engineering field is strong. To stop

    this, we would need regulations from the research phase so that firms like Bill Gates’ one

    would not finance geo-engineering.


    Under a moral perspective, if we think that technologies can save everything there is no point

    in trying to tackle climate change as we do today. Going along with transhumanism

    technologies are not the safe solutions. In some aspects geo-engineering highlights our

    human nature that does not want to change its behaviors and its way of life.

    Politically speaking, for meteorological engineering if a country decides to use a technique it

    can deprive a neighbor of certain contributions, and it would create tensions. For climate

    engineering, if an actor decides to unilaterally use a technique to modify climate it would not

    have a regional but a global impact. It is impossible for all countries to agree on what level,

    where it should be implanted and so on regarding geo-engineering.

    If we want to implement geo-engineering we would need the international law to take actions

    to have regulations in order not to have geopolitical tensions.

    As I am not in favour of geo-engineering, I do agree more with “géo-mimétisme” (Pierre

    Gilbert) that consists in regulating climate change thanks to nature. That is to say, through

    public policies we could do reforestation with diverse types of trees, switch to agroecology

    and it would lead to the absorption of 30 to 40% of our annual consumption. (Pierre

    Gilbert,2021). Opposed to it, geo-engineering, with the technique of direct air capture could

    have a significant carbon footprint. To absorb one quarter of our emissions we would have to

    multiply by two the energy consumption of our humanity. (Nature, 2021)

    Other than geo-engineering it would be more effective and more ethical to have an important

    carbon tax and to go towards production modes emitting less CO2. However, when we see

    the difficulty for certain countries to follow these instructions like China or Germany, since

    they stopped nuclear power for coal when coal consumes more CO2, it shows that we do not

    manage to decrease our CO2 emissions. Geo-engineering might be the very last recourse but

    to use it in case of the countries’ non actions.

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