Defy Global Warming with Geoengineering

                                                                 Defy Global Warming!


Bill McKibben, author of the book "The End of Nature", believes that humankind has to choose between two paths forward in dealing with climate change.   One path he calls "the defiant reflex" while the other alternative is a "more humble" way of living.  The defiant reflex refers to a reluctance to accept the scientific facts about global warming and a refusal to make changes that would reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Mr. McKibben writes:

“The choice of doing nothing – of continuing to burn ever more oil and coal will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with similar temperatures.”

McKibben's preferred option is for affluent western countries to move to a more "humble" way of living that requires less consumption of fossil fuels. Mr. McKibben believes that an over dependence on material possessions in the Western world is the reason why more people don't support steps to reduce the carbon emissions in the US and other western countries. He writes:

“the end of nature sours all of my material pleasures...... And yet it is toward such a world that our belief in endless material advancement hurries us.”

McKibben's book was written 26 years ago in 1989, during a period of optimism about the possibility of bringing about voluntary global reductions in CO2 emissions. "Earth Day" celebrations then attracted enormous crowds across the USA, the UN Kyoto Climate Accords had just been ratified two years earlier in Japan, and a general consensus seemed to exist that the planet was making progress towards combatting Greenhouse Warming.

The situation is far different in 2015. We know now that the Kyoto Accords failed at reducing CO2 emissions. Global CO2 emissions are far higher now then they were in 1987 and there is little hope of reducing them soon. The long promised post-Kyoto UN climate treaty that was supposed to introduced binding accords on CO2 emissions was abandoned after friction arose between President Obama and the Chinese delegation at the 2010 Copenhagen Conference.  The new goal in climate negotiations is to set "voluntary" targets as was done in the earlier Kyoto Accords that failed to reduce CO2 emissions. And the belief that the main problem in reducing CO2 emissions is convincing affluent people in the west to be a little less affluent must now confront the new reality that the greatest amounts of CO2 emissions now come from non-western countries like China and India that are trying to improve the lives of two billion impoverished people.

Fortunately there is another way to defy global warming other than doing nothing. There may even be a way to reverse global warming. The scientific study of methods that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and mitigate and perhaps even reduce global warming is called "geoengineering." 

 Geoengineering wouldn't be necessary if the the political leaders of countries around the world were able to agree on a treaty to reduce global CO2 emissions--but they aren't. Geoengineering wouldn't be necessary if every person on earth would voluntarily reduce their own carbon footprint -- but we won't.

There is now only one way to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, and thats geoengineering.  McKibben's 1989 definition of defiance of global warming is dead wrong ---- defiance of global warming isn't doing nothing---defiance is doing everything possible to reduce global warming, up to and including geoengineering the climate.