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

Thu Aug 19 18:16:27 CEST 2010

Hi folks, a very interesting discussion.

I wanted to interject one thought, which is that in many ways humans
have been "geo engineering" since very ancient times. Many examples
are brought to light in the book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus
and in turn the academic studies it sources.

Several centuries ago, humans on North American continent refined the
use of fire to intentionally transform hundreds of miles of landscape.
This activity resulted in complex adaptive changes in the ecology of
North America across the continent, including opening up of thousands
of square miles of prairies as habitat for bison, which used to reach
all the way to Western NY, and polyculture groves of nut and fruit
trees and bushes mixed with prime habitat for grazing game animals.
All of this was the product of periodic burning, which cleared out
huge swaths of choking vegetation, making conditions better for food
producing plants, and wild grazing herd animals. We have no idea what
effect this had on global climate. But, you can imagine that since the
climate was, and is a system, there was some effect on the climate due
to the transformation of huge parts a continent.  The history of
Europe has examples on equal scale, and so does the history of Asia,
the Middle East, etc.

There is also evidence of diversion of rivers causing unintended
destructive effects to both civilizations and landscapes (examples
from 1491 include the Cahokia site, and several Mayan sites).

In our modern world, a city is beyond the shadow of a doubt an example
of both intended and unintended "geo engineering".  The effects of
cities on the regional environment and global climate are well
evident.

It seems my point here is that throughout history, the pattern seems
to be that with humans, comes large scale ecological, climatological,
and geo logical transformation, intended and un-intended. There's now
a component of ethics, where people are starting to recognize the air,
water, outer space, and the planet as a "commons".  Framing activities
in this way forces us to think about the unintended outcomes of our
intentions.

We're now dealing with the emergence of many unintended outcomes from
our current and previous actions. So, I take very seriously that there
are many people considering a scaling up of "geo engineering" to
faster temporal scales, and global physical scales. Personally, I
believe our past as a species, and the natural history of Earth offers
us some clues. "Geoengineering" can create a causal momentum, but the
environment in which it happens has a huge effect on the outcome of
"geo-engineering" initiations. If we are conserving, restoring, and
propagating more diverse ecologies that work the way that complex
ecologies like forests work, we'll have a better chance of bringing
back a balance to the earth's systems in a way that can absorb sharp
fluctuations.

If we are to pursue "geo-engineering", let the bulk of time, energy
and resources go towards creating/restoring wild or human-made systems
that use cycles of bio-ecology for creation of energy for people and
machines, processing of waste, and transformation of landscapes.
Change the way that many people live in this way, and it will create a
lasting environment of change in the ecology and climate of the world
(as billions of years of living history on this planet seem to
confirm).

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 4:58 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ---------- 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"
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