[p2p-research] Fwd: "Geo-Engineering" Is A Declaration of War That Doesn't Care About Democracy

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jamais Cascio <cascio at openthefuture.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: "Geo-Engineering" Is A Declaration of War That Doesn't Care
About Democracy
To: Dale Carrico <dalec at berkeley.edu>
Cc: Amanda at worldchanging.com, moonecc at yahoo.com, bruces at well.com,
michelsub2004 at gmail.com


Dale, your commenting system told me both that the comment was too big, and
that the comment was being saved for review and publication. In case it
didn't get the whole thing, here's the response in full.

Hi Dale

A brief response to a couple of items here, while I mull the best
longer-form reply.

First: an example of what I mean by "sober consideration" would be the
announcement this past March by the UK's <a href="
http://www.royalsociety.org">Royal Society</a> scientific academy of a <a
href="
http://royalsociety.org/Royal-Society-launches-major-study-on-the-governance-of-geoengineering/">project
to study governance of geoengineering</a>, in concert with <a href="
http://www.twas.org/">TWAS</a> (the "Academy of Sciences for the Developing
World"), and the <a href="http://www.edf.org/home.cfm?">Environmental
Defense Fund</a>. None of these could be considered astroturfers, cold
warriors, or carbon criminals, and they are taking seriously the possible
need to engage in large-scale intervention to forestall global disaster.

Second: as you hadn't focused on the technical side of geoengineering in
your initial post, I did not in my response; I have surveyed the variety of
possible geoengineering proposals, including highlighting critical problems,
numerous times on Open the Future and in my various talks and papers on the
topic. See <a href="http://www.openthefuture.com/2008/05/who_decides.html">here</a>,
for example, where I take a look at a study on side-effects of sulfate
injection, and talk about both environmental and political risks.

Third: While the exact phrasing of the definition I offered may not have
"canonical force," it is based on the descriptions used by the actual
scientists working on geoengineering research, such as Ken Caldeira and Alan
Robock. It's very important to distinguish between geoengineering scientists
and geoengineering cheerleaders, and not slip into a broad-brush mindset
that implies that anyone talking about geoengineering must be in the pockets
of the Pentagon-Exxon-AEI triumverate. There's a very wide range of
positions out there among the people advocating geoengineering research, and
it's a vocal minority who see geoengineering as a way to avoid carbon
reductions (in fact, *every* geoengineering scientist I've spoken with is
adamant that geoengineering should only be used -- if it's used -- in
support of aggressive carbon reductions).

Ultimately, geoengineering is a <em>dilemma</em>, where no answer is a good
one.

We are very quickly approaching -- and may already have passed -- the point
where doing the right things as quickly as humanly possible, with the right
people having the right motives, <em>simply wouldn't be enough to avoid mass
casualties</em>, mostly among the people least responsible for the problem.
And since we're not doing enough of the right things, the right people
aren't being listened to, and the right motives are largely being ignored by
global political leadership, the chances are *very* high that we will find
ourselves facing problems hitting too fast and too hard to deal with
properly. In that situation, we have to have an answer to the question "what
can we do?" You're right -- "do anything" is *not* the answer. The problem
is figuring out what to do when "the best thing" isn't enough.




On Aug 18, 2010, at 10:20 AM, Dale Carrico wrote:

>
http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2010/08/geo-engineering-is-declaration-of-war.html
>
> --
> Dale Carrico, PhD
> Lecturer, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
> Visiting Faculty, San Francisco Art Institute
> http://amormundi.blogspot.com
> --------------------------------------------------
> "The Queen Is Not A Subject" -- Oscar Wilde
>
>



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jamais Cascio
cascio at openthefuture.com
Open the Future - with enough minds, all tomorrows are visible
  http://www.openthefuture.com

"The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope"
 -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin







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