The Etc Geoeng report

[Andrew Lockley]

Diane,

 

I note Etc group report on geoengineering.  http://www.etcgroup.org/upload/publication/pdf_file/Retooling%20the%20Planet.final_.pdf

 

This represents an impressive collation of information on the subject (especially on schemes, advocates and patents).  However, the analysis of the politics is deeply unbalanced, and the advocated policy response is ill-considered and dangerous.

 

Fundamentally, the report fails to properly consider that the world is currently carrying out inadvertent geoengineering on a massive scale, by the addition of vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.  To consider geoengineering without reference to this fact renders your critique inappropriate.  Geoeng advocates are not proposing these schemes to give us sunny bank holidays or more clement winters, they are doing so because the world is careering towards a climate apocalypse and the politicians are doing virtually nothing to stop it.  The ‘strict application of the precautionary principle’ which you call for is breathtakingly inappropriate, when it is so clearly incautious to be allowing continuing carbon emissions.  Were we able to not only stop such emissions immediately, but also magic-away the entire carbon output since the industrial revolution, I would find no hesitation in joining your call for precautionary-principle restrictions on geoengineering.  Sadly, that scenario is simply a fairytale - and to base your organisations’ politics on it is frankly ludicrous.  Climate change is real, dangerous and immediate, and the Etc Group’s ideological opposition to geoengineering will not change that one jot.

 

In the light of the above, I note particularly the following, obvious problems with your organisation’s report.

 

• 1)      It fails to properly consider the clear and obvious differences between SRM and sequestration.  Whilst SRM can only ever be a sticking-plaster, sequestration is a natural process that can be enhanced or emulated to reverse the damage that has already been done.  To oppose sequestration is to argue for the continuation of the floods, droughts and famines which already affect millions around the world.  If your policy is that we should deliberately keep our altered climate, with its accompanying death and disease, please state this clearly and honestly.  Such a position would find the Etc. Group few friends if it were baldly stated.
• 2)      Your opposition to real-world experiments fails to take account of the fact that many such experiments can be carried out on a very small scale, with no appreciable climate or environmental impact.  Many such small-scale Geoeng experiments would be a direct recreation of natural processes, which renders the risk of significant, unforeseen harm to be vanishingly small.
• 3)      Your argument that claimed urgency is inherently a reason to prevent the granting of patents is wholly unjustifiable – inventors do not claim the context of use, only the purpose.  Thus, your attempts to prohibit patenting of Geoeng schemes will serve only to delay development of technologies that may prove crucial in the longer term. 
• 4)      Your calls for the prevention of private-sector involvement in experimentation are indefensible.  Should a university be prevented from chartering a research plane from a private company?  Should they be refused the right to buy equipment, or to seek partners, from the private sector?

 

As a long-standing member of the environmental movement, I am deeply saddened by the extremist stance Etc Group is taking on this crucial issue.  Instead of providing a crucial civil-society overwatch, your organisation has descended into ideology and polemic.

 

The world needs intelligent critique on geoengineering, particularly where this acts to fetter the desire of business-as-usual advocates to use such technology as an excuse not to mitigate emissions.  It is time for the Etc group to drop its simplistic dogma and move to a more credible position.  The vast majority of serious geoengineers do not wish the technology to be misused, and we need civil society groups to support the proper use of our work.

 

A

[David Schnare]

This belongs on Clim, not geo. 

David Schnare

Center for Environmental Stewardship

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