Geo-Engineering: Solution for Our Future?

How much should we rely on technology and human interference to “fix” climate change?A group of 11 Dickinson students were able to travel to Washington DC with Professor Niemitz and Neil Leary on October 20th and 21st to meet with experts in various fields looking at the US place in regards to climate change. This unbelievable opportunity was arranged by Neil Leary and was part of Dickinson’s Africa Mosaic program, which culminates in our participating in the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Durban, South Africa. This trip, therefore, acted as a good introduction to the level of knowledge we still need to understand better to be informed student researchers at Durban, as well as a good experience for meeting each other, and understanding how tired we are going to be at this conference!
One of the biggest topics we listened to speakers present included the US’s role in mitigation strategies towards combating climate change. If you’re not familiar with “mitigation”, this is generally considered an action that needs to be taken to combat some of the climatic variation and increasingly high levels of CO2 we have put into the atmosphere. This includes enacting policy reducing our emissions, creating “carbon sinks” to hold “extra” emissions we don’t want in the atmosphere, and research and development of cleaner technologies to take out or prevent CO2 from going into the atmosphere. Obviously, “mitigation” has many complex political, social, and economic factors tied in with any of the above implementation strategies, making providing a balanced assessment of all these factors incredibly difficult. However, with the issue of technological development by humans to combat CO2 that’s already in the air, I continue to have several ethical questions associated with this form of human interference.
To provide my doubts with some context to better understand current technological (specifically known as “geo-enginnering” or “Climate Engineering”) mitigation options, let me better define what geo-engineering is. This blog defines geo-engineering as, “the study and implementation of technical ways to change (and arguably improve) things like weather patterns, river paths, soils, climates and sea currents on Earth. Recently, geo-engineering has received special attention for efforts to combat global warming.” <http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/> Listening to Michael McCraken, retired Chief Scientist for Climate Change at Climate Institute, the implementation of “geo-engineering” strategies in the near future to combat our changing climate was made to seem practical, cost-effective, and SAFE. throughout his presentation though, I felt a nagging sense of doubt as to the ethical line we as human can cross to try to “fix” our climate after initially being the group who “broke” it in the first place.

I would like to mention, that this article is merely a sounding-board to hopefully get conversations on climate change, mitigation, and technologies started. I do not necessarily disagree with the principles of Michael McCraken. Indeed, I thought him to be an excellent speaker, one of the rare figures in science who can successful convey scientific information, and make it understandable to the layman without patronizing the listening. I greatly respect this ability of his, and wish that more scientists could advance knowledge to the general public this way. However, his unfaltering devotion to technological solutions to mitigate climate change, is something I can understand, but not successfully contend with. As two people that grew up in vastly different generations, it could be argued that I and my peers sitting at that conference table have more inherent knowledge of technology’s place in our lives in this day and age. It controls, organizes, and sometimes consumes or social and academic lives, yet we have a sense of what horrible things it can do in the face of the environment. For example, failing of technology in the Gulf Spill and health concerns from cell phone radiation as two such examples. McCracken grew up in a generation that was excited and optimistic about the new implementation of technology into their lives, while we as a generation have been formed as a society by such technology from our birth. Perhaps, his optimism about greater technology advancements gives him the sense of trust he feels in implementing, what I believe most of feel at least of moderate risk to the health of our plant.
Putting trust in anything is a scary and risky venture—trust in humans, trust in technology, trust in government; yet trust can be formed to varying degrees. I feel that “trust in technology” should be low on the climate change totem pole. From a precautionary standpoint, I know I am not alone in feeling this way. we as humans were initially and still are responsible, for putting the CO2 in our atmosphere that is still there. We did through implementation of technologies and ever increasing prevalence and reliance on them. Even now when we have knowledge of the harmful effects of coal plants, extraction of resources for our increasing number of electronic products, and the carbon off-puts of creation and running of our cars, we continue to push for new technologies that can supposed enact positive change in the face of climate change. Does this not seem counter-intuitive to people?? Logically, increased reliance on one form of technology to improve our condition, when we have already created an increasingly negative situation through technological reliance and advancement, makes no sense to me.
Geo-engineering from an uncertainty standpoint, literally seems to show that the blowing of sulfur particles into the atmosphere  by balloons to reflect solar radiation, or the building of ships with “smokestacks” to vaporize water and blow it into the atmosphere to increase cloud reflectivity, is not only a viable , but safe approach to combating an issue we created in the first place. For me, geo-engineering and other climate mitigation strategies seem like doing the largest science fair experiment on OUR ENTIRE EARTH! Like our previous (and arguably unhealthy) reliance on technology, how can we claim these developments will not affect our planet and us any differently. Okay, so the intention of a positive impact is there, but is that enough?
From an ethical standpoint, I feel like we have no place to create and implement such plans. We are playing “climate god,” and I feel from a moral standpoint that is not appropriate towards combating a global situation such as climate change. Indeed it’s no way to deal with complex social justice issues, environmental degradation, etc. (but that’s an argument for another day…) Without the implementation of enough successful policy, economic changes, and social shifts towards mitigating climate change, we as a species do not yet have the justification towards implementing such large scale geo-engineering projects around our planet. As a hopeful and progressive person, I subsequently believe that perhaps after such measures have taken, small scale testing of such futuristic technological ideas can occur—but today we need to put our faith and effort towards other mitigation strategies. We can not continue to rely on technology to solve our problems, as presently it has created an equal level, if not more, of negative issues in the face of climate change. We have a place in our world, just like all the other species that are going to be affected by anthropogenic climate change, and making technological “creations” to play “climate god” with our plant is not our place.