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geoengineering
As Extreme Heat Bakes US, 160+ Global Groups Demand 'Real' Climate Action
"Reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
Jun 23, 2025
As about 265 million people across the United States face advisories for this week's "climate change-driven heatwave," over 160 groups from 45 countries on Monday collectively called for "real" and urgent action to "keep global warming below 1.5ºC to preserve a healthy and livable planet for ourselves and future generations."
The "call to action" was released as United Nations climate meetings are wrapping up in Bonn, Germany, and in anticipation of the next U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), set to be held in Belém, Brazil in November.
The joint call was published on the first day of the virtual Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond, organized by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism."
"The climate crisis is not just an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of justice, of society, and of humanity itself. How we respond, and who is centered in that response, matters profoundly," said WECAN founder and executive director Osprey Orielle Lake in a statement. "We are calling for systemic transformation—one that delivers climate, social, and economic justice for all generations."
"While governments and corporations push us deeper into climate chaos, movements around the world are rising," she noted. "From every corner of the Earth, women leaders are coming together with solutions and strategies to defend our planet and our communities. We call on governments and financial institutions to heed their voices and ensure effective and equitable policies—from Bonn to Belém and beyond. We must rise boldly, because climate change is not waiting for politics. Our movements are not bending. We are not breaking. We are defining and building a healthy and just future for all."
The new call to action points out that "last year, the world breached this threshold with global average temperatures exceeding 1.5ºC above preindustrial levels. This alarming milestone is not yet a permanent breach of the Paris agreement guardrail, which refers to long-term warming, although scientists predict that 2024 will be the first of a 20-year period reaching 1.5ºC warming."
"Although the pathway is drastically narrowing, the International Energy Agency affirms that the goal of the Paris agreement is still attainable," the publication continues. "Scientists assert that limiting global warming to 1.5ºC will require significant and urgent action from governments and financial institutions."
Specifically, the coalition outlined 10 broad actions for governments and financial institutions, beginning with urging both the public and private sectors to end fossil fuel expansion and extraction, and to "reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
The collective also called for accelerating a just transition, promoting women's leadership and gender equity, protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples, safeguarding forests and biodiversity, preserving oceans and freshwater, advancing food security and sovereignty, implementing the Rights of Nature, providing robust climate finance, and cutting off financial institutions' support for "harmful projects and redirecting resources into climate solutions."
STARTING SOON! The first day of the Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond is kicking off today at 1:00 PM EDT! Join us via Zoom for interpretation and chat moderation or be welcome to watch live on Facebook and Youtube! tinyurl.com/CJ-2025
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— WECAN International (@wecan-intl.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 11:49 AM
In addition to WECAN, signatories include Amazon Watch, Journalists for Human Rights, MADRE, MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Urgewald, and over 100 other organizations.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism," said Zukiswa White, a project specialist and social justice consultant, and speaker at the WECAN assembly. "Corporations, financial institutions, and governments have criminalized and penalized those fighting to defend life, protect the integrity of the planet, and fight for climate action. All this, while the wealthy elite profit off of extracting and burning our planet's resources."
"If we are to prevent the worst of climate change—a crisis that is already impacting most people on the planet—we demand that we insist on a different path," White continued. "Choosing to keep the status quo is neither a coincidence nor is it our inevitable destiny. Rather, it is a political choice. So too is upholding systems that violate planetary boundaries. To counter this, we must center the work of frontline leaders and experts around the world—move into implementation of policies that not only halt climate devastation, but also champion democratic, gender transformative, and community-based solutions."
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'Geoengineering Fails Again': Coalition Cheers End of Arctic Ice Project
One campaigner said the cancellation "marks another monumental victory for our planet and future generations, a victory where Indigenous peoples' resistance has been central."
Jan 30, 2025
Environmental and Indigenous activists declared Thursday that "geoengineering fails again," welcoming the shutdown of a project that aimed to use "a reflective material to protect and restore Arctic sea ice," which is rapidly disappearing as humanity's reliance on fossil fuels heats the planet.
Noting that "we committed to moving forward only if we could conclusively demonstrate both the safety and effectiveness of our approach," the Arctic Ice Project team confirmed in an online statement that it "will be concluding its research and winding down the organization."
"While our climate impact simulations have shown promising results (with a new scientific paper forthcoming), recent ecotoxicological tests have revealed potential risks to the Arctic food chain," the team said. "Our initial approach was to continue research aimed at addressing these concerns. Upon further reflection, however, the board decided that the combination of these new test results with broad skepticism toward geoengineering, resistance to introducing new materials into the Arctic Ocean, and the increasingly challenging funding environment (and paucity of federal research dollars), the most realistic path was to conclude our research."
"Nature is not a laboratory; it is a living entity we are in relationship with."
Responding in a Thursday statement, Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance global coordinator Coraina de la Plaza said that "the cancellation of the Arctic Ice Project marks another monumental victory for our planet and future generations, a victory where Indigenous peoples' resistance has been central. This outcome reflects the power of community advocacy, and while the fight against geoengineering is far from over, this is a significant step to continue protecting the Arctic against industry greed and vested interests."
Panganga Pungowiyi, climate geoengineering organizer at Indigenous Environmental Network, called the decision "long overdue."
"We are concerned for the community members in Utqiaġvik who were made to spread football fields of this material onto their frozen lake. For years, we stood in defense of Indigenous lands and the sacred ice that has sustained our communities for generations," Pungowiyi explained. "Our concerns about the reckless use of harmful materials were dismissed, yet we knew that the health of our ecosystems and the wisdom of our people must not be overlooked. We continually showed up in defense of free prior and informed consent, and made our presence known."
"We continue to state firmly that nature is not a laboratory; it is a living entity we are in relationship with," the organizer added. "While we find relief in this victory, we remain vigilant against other forms of geoengineering that threaten our sacred spaces. Together, we will continue to educate and empower our communities, standing with our lands, waters, and air for the generations to come."
Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director at ETC Group, said that "today we celebrate the wisdom, experience, and work of Indigenous peoples and organizations in Alaska that stopped this project and stand in solidarity with their vigilance against similar experiments that are planned in Arctic regions."
Mary Church, geoengineering campaign manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, also framed the development as "a huge victory for the Indigenous communities at the forefront of resistance to the industries and vested interests that are polluting the planet and gambling with our collective future."
"Geoengineering approaches do nothing to address the root causes of the climate crisis and instead delay real solutions, offering a free pass to polluters," she stressed. "Following the recent reaffirmation of the global moratorium on geoengineering at the U.N. biodiversity summit in Colombia, governments need to act to prevent harmful outdoor experiments and the slippery slope to legitimizing deployment. Instead of betting on highly speculative techno-fixes, governments must prioritize an urgent and just transition away from fossil fuels to protect vital Arctic ecosystems."
Benjamin Day, a senior campaigner for climate and energy justice at Friends of the Earth U.S., also looked to the fight ahead.
"The decision to shut down the Arctic Ice Project completes the Geoengineering Hype Cycle that we now see so often: Entrepreneurs swoop into local communities claiming they have a solution to global warming, assuring everyone it's completely safe and ignoring the red flags raised by those with deep knowledge of local ecosystems," Day said. "After countless wasted dollars and press attention, it's revealed the community was right and geoengineering is not a safe or responsible way to address climate change."
"Collectively," he argued, "we must stop enabling this cycle and work towards rapidly and equitably transitioning our communities to sustainable energy and land-use practices."
The winding down of the Arctic Ice Project comes amid global fears about what the recent return of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump—who cozied up to Big Oil executives on the campaign trail and promised to "drill, baby, drill," despite the devastating impacts of fossil fuels—will mean for the future of a planet that last year saw record-shattering temperatures.
Already, Trump has
ditched the Paris climate agreement (again), lifted a freeze on new liquefied natural gas exports, declared a "national energy emergency," and named various fossil fuel allies to key positions. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took their posts earlier this week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate Thursday evening, and Chris Wright, Trump's pick for energy secretary, awaits confirmation.
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Helene and Milton Conspiracy Theories Have Roots in the Real Plot Against Nature
The modern state’s drive to dominate the environment and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for ideas that the U.S. government can control hurricanes.
Oct 21, 2024
The recent natural disasters caused by the Helene and Milton tropical cyclones in the Southern U.S. have triggered unfounded and ill-informed conspiracies about the origin of the disasters and the government’s involvement in weather modification. Despite being based on ill-informed claims that defy common sense, these conspiracies have historical contexts.
In a broader sense, the modern state’s drive to dominate nature and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for such conspiracies. Environmental conspiracies have long been an integral part of the larger conspiracy against nature, which treat nature as a cornucopia of resources external to human identity and society that must be dominated to maximize its utility.
Environmental conspiracies have long served the interests of power structures, enabling them to control people and societies by dominating nature. These false claims have significantly shaped modern Western techno-bureaucratic approaches to nature and the environment. Interestingly, many of the dominant misguided claims were not propagated by ordinary people but by epistemic circles within the state apparatus, including scientists, ecologists, geographers, and naturalists who were and are part of the bureaucratic and technical machinery of the colonial or neocolonial states.
The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.
One of the conspiracy theories surrounding recent natural disasters involves the alleged involvement of the U.S. federal government in controlling and harnessing these disasters for political and economic ends. Although this claim that the Biden administration has manipulated Hurricane Milton is ludicrous, the desire to exert control over nature and natural processes has long been the inspiration of the modern state and its techno-bureaucratic machinery, at least since the European Enlightenment. From the colonial state manipulating and altering ecological landscapes, socio-ecological practices, and dismantling traditional knowledge sources, to current efforts to manipulate and control planetary processes through techno-bureaucratic techniques, such as geoengineering and planetary management, the domination and control of nature have remained an active pursuit within the state’s or state-supported technocratic and epistemic circles. Control over nature is part of the rationalizing and moralizing mandate of the modern state.
Embedded in the works of influential Enlightenment thinkers was establishing mastery over nature. This maxim provided a clear intellectual foundation for the systematic and cumulative progression in the understanding of nature through the means and tools of natural sciences within the epistemological fabrics of empiricism. Francis Bacon, an early Enlightenment philosopher, advocated for scientists to meticulously observe and accurately measure natural processes to gain mastery over them. He also proposed that the government should financially support these scientific pursuits to achieve such mastery. Consequently, in tandem with the progress in natural science, Western colonial and post-colonial states financed and endorsed scientific, and at times pseudo-scientific, undertakings to exert dominance over nature.
Colonial Fabrications
Although Bacon proposed a methodical approach to gathering evidence, involving a continuous interaction between theory and evidence, in the colonies, the European colonial states couldn’t afford to postpone their loot and plunder for the sake of a time-consuming scientific process or exert their power over nature and people. Instead, they resorted to ecological conspiracies and ill-informed theories to justify and rationalize their socio-ecological intervention and domination.
During colonial rule in al-Maghrib, French colonial ecologists expounded ecological conspiracies that gained widespread acceptance as scientific facts, even to an extent today. Drawing on biblical narratives, they claimed that the Sahara Desert had once been a fertile and lush geography that had served as the Roman Empire’s granary. They further doubled down on the conspiracy and blamed the native people’s social and ecological practices for transforming the once lush region into the arid Sahara. Scientifically, there is no evidence suggesting that the Sahara Desert was green during the Roman Empire. Contrary to the colonial ecologists’ claim, recent scientific evidence indicates that the Saharan region was just as arid and harsh at the end of the last Ice Age as it is today.
India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.
The environmental conspiracy provided a convenient excuse for colonial powers to justify their oppression and domination by blaming the natives for an imagined ecological catastrophe. It also justified European dominance and invasions by claiming a historical responsibility to restore the Sahara to its original fertile state, which they portrayed as a region that could once again supply Europe with agricultural goods. This justification not only upheld European colonial control but also moralized and materialized their plunders by dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands and resources.
In South Asia, the colonial administrators, experts, and operatives faced the challenge of dealing with unpredictable rivers, especially those originating from the Himalayas. They devised environmental conspiracies that long served as scientific claims. In Northern India, facing persistent failure to contain and control the flow of the Indus and other mighty rivers for centralizing irrigation practices, British colonial experts wrongly attributed the frequent destructive floods in the upper Indus Valley to the obstruction of the rivers by glaciers in their upper regions. Lacking evidence, they based their speculative scientific claims on their knowledge of European rivers.
Environmental conspiracies by the colonial British in India were mostly due to the unscientific socialization of colonial experts. Many of these experts, such as ecologists, hydro- and civil- engineers, and geographers, were not trained as scientists but rather as soldiers, military officers, or colonial operatives. Their roles as scientists in India were more out of necessity, primarily driven by the need to assert control over nature by manipulating socio-ecological practices to maximize economic plunder. As a result, these colonial agents engaged in extensive and unregulated ecological experimentation, which resulted in numerous human tragedies such as floods, famines, and diseases. India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.
U.S. Misinformation
Environmental conspiracies and conspiracies against nature for ecological and social exploitation were not confined to 19th-century European colonial powers; similar ideas flourished in the United States as well. James Espy, the first official American meteorologist, lobbied Congress for funding to burn forests of Appalachia in hopes of inducing rain. A storm enthusiast, much like today’s amateur storm chasers, Espy initially worked as a schoolteacher before he devoted himself to studying storms. He believed that burning forests could trigger rain.
Although Congress ultimately declined to back Espy’s proposal, it did allocate funds for Robert Dyrenforth’s rain theory. In the late 19th century, the Senate approved funding for Dyrenforth, a former Civil War general and an engineer by profession, who proposed that creating loud noises through explosives in the atmosphere could agitate clouds and cause them to release rain. Drawn from his experiences during the war, Dyrenforth’s idea was a bold attempt to manipulate weather patterns.
After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather.
In the summer of 1891, Dyrenforth and his team of rainmaking enthusiasts, which included a meteorologist from the Smithsonian Institute and a college professor, embarked on a series of experiments by waging several attacks against the atmosphere. They launched an all-out assault on the sky detonating blasting dynamite, firing mortar shells, igniting smoke bombs, flying electrified kites, setting off oxy-hydrogen balloons, and even unleashing a spectacular array of fireworks. The intention was to manipulate the natural process of rainmaking.
Controlling the atmospheric dynamics in the United States has not been the hobby or fixation of weather enthusiasts. Scientists equally contributed to the fascination of dominating and controlling the atmosphere. During the initial years of the Cold War, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chemist Irving Langmuir claimed to have developed a method of harnessing and controlling hurricanes. After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather. Around this time, weather manipulation became a strategic goal during the Cold War. The political and geopolitical landscape of the era compelled the two superpowers to engage scientists and harness scientific advancements to manipulate weather and nature for their strategic objectives and goals.
Against Nature
These examples could easily, and also rightly, be viewed as anecdotal. However, beyond these specific instances, there exists a common and overarching ontological premise that has led to various scientific and pseudo-scientific experiments. Moreover, this premise also influences popular environmental conspiracies and techno-bureaucratic/epistemic conspiracies against nature. The premise is the aspiration to dominate nature. Although Irving was indeed a bright scientist, the setting of his experiment parallels those of colonial scientists—or so-called scientists—active in regions like al-Maghrib and South Asia. They all sought to assert control over natural processes. In the 21st century, amid ongoing ecological crises, this mission has broadened its scope to include the manipulation and management of global planetary systems and processes.
The enabling context for popular environmental conspiracies, such as those that emerged following the two tropical cyclones in the southern United States, is an overarching reductionist, simplistic, and anthropocentric understanding of nature. It isn’t, however, an outlook born from the minds of everyday individuals; rather, it reflects a deeper understanding of modern civilization rooted in the logic of the modern state, influenced by Enlightenment ideals. It is further implemented through the techno-bureaucratic apparatus of the state that aims to realize the state’s legal and moral duty of monopolizing violence, whether caused by humans or nature. The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.
Nature is not an external entity out there to be controlled and dominated. On the contrary, it is a complicated self-regulating and self-perpetuating collection of processes, elements, and mechanisms, where humans are as much a part of it as non-human living and non-living elements. Although contemporary humans, through their advanced material-technological culture, can manipulate various aspects of nature, we—along with our political and social structures, including the state—often struggle to predict or design the outcomes of such interventions.
Nature is an agent of its own. It can reset the disruptions and offsets caused by humans. How this happens remains a mystery. Although we can understand its processes to some extent, the reactions and resetting mechanisms are ultimately unknown. This highlights an important lesson for modern humanity, especially for the power structures: Rather than trying to manage, regulate, or control the planetary processes, we must focus on minimizing our footprints and encroachment into the boundaries of nature now more than ever.
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The Dangerous Politics of Climate Engineering
The idea that humans can manipulate the Earth to reduce the risks of climate change relies on and perpetuates a futile sense of human control and domination over our planet.
Jul 21, 2024
Climate scientists around the world are now projecting warming of at least 2.5°C within this century. As U.S. and other wealthy governments fail to phase out fossil fuels, investments in climate engineering—technological interventions to manipulate the climate—have been increasing.
We’re seeing this play out in real time in Massachusetts. This August, a team of researchers plans to dump 6,600 gallons of sodium hydroxide into ocean waters just south of Martha’s Vineyard. Next summer, they intend to dump a staggering 66,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine. They call it the “LOC-NESS” experiment, and it’s intended to test a new geoengineering technique called “ocean alkalinity enhancement.” They plan to make ocean waters less acidic, causing them to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They hope if alkaline substances were dumped at truly massive scales it could offset a portion of human caused emissions.
There are many serious concerns with manipulating the ocean environment in an attempt to address climate change. Sodium hydroxide is a dangerous substance that causes chemical burns on contact with humans or marine life. The dumping locations are home to at least eight endangered species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. This experiment will alter the ocean environment, creating new risks to many already threatened marine species.
Rather than supporting manipulations of Earth’s systems, humanity needs to deploy existing solutions that center ecological integrity, environmental justice, and human rights.
Dozens of reputable studies also cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of ocean alkalinity enhancement. At least two gigatons of alkaline material would have to be dumped continuously by every bulk carrier and cargo ship in the world in order to capture only 4% of current CO2 emissions. Additionally, mining on the scale the project requires, as well as transporting the mined materials to ships for dumping, likely causes more greenhouse gasses to be emitted than it removes from the atmosphere after it’s dumped in the ocean.
The idea that humans can manipulate the Earth to reduce the risks of climate change relies on and perpetuates a futile sense of human control and domination over our planet. This false sense of control emerges directly from the technological optimism of billionaires who are enthusiastically advocating for more geoengineering research, like those funding the LOC-NESS project. In addition to wasting money that could instead be used to fund wind and solar projects already proven to reduce emissions, climate engineering diverts attention away from the equitable phaseout of fossil fuels that is urgently needed to avoid further climate catastrophe.
The scientists involved in the LOC-NESS experiment say they are not advocating for immediate deployment of marine geoengineering—just to develop the technologies and information that society may need in the future if we do decide to geoengineer. However, the history of multiple technological advances shows that after a technology is developed, the scientists involved lose control over what happens next. This disconnect is clearly demonstrated in the film Oppenheimer, when the U.S. military comes to transport the nuclear bomb away from Los Alamos. In a telling moment, Oppenheimer asks to be kept up-to-date about when the technology will be used. The military general responds with a clear message—the job of the Los Alamos scientists is done and they will no longer be involved. As the saying goes, history tends to repeat itself.
Despite the powerful influence of those advocating for climate engineering, concerned citizens around the world are mobilizing against it. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has established an effective moratorium on geoengineering, making exceptions only for small-scale research projects conducted in a controlled environment—which the LOC-NESS experiment is not. Indigenous People in particular have led resistance to many geoengineering experiments, which frequently target Indigenous lands for deployment.
Rather than supporting manipulations of Earth’s systems, humanity needs to deploy existing solutions that center ecological integrity, environmental justice, and human rights. Recognizing that climate chaos is a symptom, and not the core problem, is essential for effective transformative change. We must oppose projects like LOC-NESS and focus on guiding our world toward a healthy, just, and sustainable future.
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False Climate Solution of Geoengineering Could Cause Heatwaves Thousands of Miles Away
"We need more regional geoengineering modeling studies like this work to characterize these unintended side effects before they have a chance to play out in the real world," said the study's lead author.
Jun 21, 2024
A study published Friday found that a cloud engineering technique designed to cool parts of the western United States could inadvertently stoke heatwaves from North America to Europe, underscoring why many scientists reject geoengineering as a false climate solution.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, concludes that marine cloud brightening (MCB)—"a geoengineering proposal to cool atmospheric temperatures and reduce climate change impacts"—in the "remote mid-latitudes or proximate subtropics" of the northern Pacific Ocean—would decrease "the relative risk of dangerous summer heat exposure by 55% and 16%, respectively."
However, the researchers found that regions including Africa's Sahel, central North America, Europe, and northeastern Asia would "experience exacerbated heat stress and hotter summers with MCB than would otherwise occur under global warming."
Additionally, the study shows that MCB would be less effective over time and could "even increase heat stress in the western United States" and beyond by mid-century.
University of California San Diego researcher Jessica Wan, who led the study, told The Guardian that MCB "can be very effective for the U.S. West Coast if done now, but it may be ineffective there in the future and could cause heatwaves in Europe."
The study's authors said the paper's findings are especially troubling given the dearth of international MCB regulation.
"There is really no solar geoengineering governance right now. That is scary," said Wan. "Science and policy need to be developed together. We don't want to be in a situation where one region is forced to do geoengineering to combat what another part of the world has done to respond to droughts and heatwaves."
As New Scientist reported:
The MCB experiments that have taken place so far in Australia and California haven't been of a sufficiently large scale to cause detectable climate effects, but they suggest that regional geoengineering could be closer to reality than previously thought, says Wan. "We need more regional geoengineering modeling studies like this work to characterize these unintended side effects before they have a chance to play out in the real world."
In Australia, researchers are experimenting with geoengineering techniques in an effort to cool the Great Barrier Reef and decelerate its bleaching. In California, scientists from the University of Washington sprayed sea salt flecks over a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay in hushed testing that was halted by the city of Alameda last month over safety concerns.
"We strongly welcome Alameda City Council's unanimous decision to say no to the first open-air marine cloud brightening experiment in the U.S.," Mary Church of the Center for International Environmental Law said after the halt. "Key concerns raised by council members focused on lack of sufficient information, notice, and transparency. The rejection rightfully reflects the gravity of what's at stake for both local and global communities."
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Climate Envoy John Kerry’s Disturbing Sci-Fi Approach to the Climate Crisis
When it comes to sustainable farming and the climate crisis, the former Secretary of State seems to be more interested in science fiction than science fact.
May 31, 2023
John Kerry, the former Senator, Secretary of State and Presidential candidate, has been saying some odd and disturbing things about the climate crisis—and how to go about addressing it. When questioned in a recent BBC interview about his country’s slow pace away from fossil fuels, Kerry said not to worry because, “I’m told by scientists that 50% of the reductions we have to make (to get to near zero emissions) by 2050 or 2045 are going to come from technologies we don’t yet have.”
One might think that suggesting the planet would be saved by technologies yet to be discovered would be ridiculous enough. But Kerry doubled down. Although he admitted that industrial agriculture, and especially factory farms, are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, he pushed back on the idea of reducing meat consumption as a step in the right direction. He assured the public that future technology might allow us all to keep on eating all the ‘meat’ we want because, “[t]here is a lot of research being done now that will change the way meat is produced….And we don't know some of the answers to these."
Kerry is also a long-term supporter of genetically engineered (GE) crops and claims, with no evidence provided, that growing GE crops will help address the climate crisis. In reality, these commodity crops which take up almost half the cropland in the U.S. are not designed to address climate, but rather to tolerate massive amounts of herbicides. This major increase in herbicide use is only great for the bottom line of Bayer/Monsanto and other chemical companies. The massive monocultures of GE crops significantly deplete the soil, and the manufacture and use of these herbicides increases emissions of greenhouse gases and these herbicides while also killing soil microbes thereby further degrading the soil’s ability to sequester carbon. But again, Kerry seems to be more interested in science fiction than science fact.
Using AI to address ag and climate is not only a sci-fi fantasy, it is incredibly dangerous and damaging.
Such irresponsible, blind faith in technology statements are not just from any politician—Kerry is Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. And unfortunately, Kerry is at it again, this time advocating spending millions of dollars promoting Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a climate solution. In doing so, he has teamed up with current USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, whom Kerry seriously considered as a running mate when he ran for president in 2004.
A little background on Secretary Vilsack is key to this story. Starting with his governorship of Iowa and extending to now his third term as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack has been a tireless supporter of industrial agriculture, factory farms, and highly invasive agritech including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and AI. To push this agenda, Vilsack is spearheading an international effort dubbed Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM). Though not yet two years old, AIM has raised $13 billion and counting, and includes corporate agritech partners such as BASF, Bayer/Monsanto and Syngenta, along with a couple hundred other industrial ag companies and organizations. The idea is to use these billions to “buy out” the agricultural research at universities and countries around the globe to move them away from local and sustainable priorities and push towards these high-tech priorities which will profit AIM’s corporate partners.
Vilsack and Kerry stood side-by-side early this May to mark the end of AIM’s three day “summit” on food and climate issues. There they announced the winner of the organization’s competition entitled, “AIM for Climate Grand Challenge: Leveraging the Power of AI and Machine-Learning.” The winner received a multimillion-dollar grant to push this agenda. Using AI to address ag and climate is not only a sci-fi fantasy, it is incredibly dangerous and damaging. Never mind that 70-80% of the world’s food is provided by small family farms who know their farms and communities’ needs far better than AIM-promoted computers or robots. Moreover, imagine the dystopian scenario were AIM to succeed in having countries replace these hundreds of millions of local farmers who have farmed their land for many generations with AI and sensor operators. These farmers would lose their livelihoods, communities would be decimated, and irreplaceable Indigenous knowledge of soil, seeds and food would be lost.
As AIM spends billions on research of costly and dangerous experimental technologies, we need to promote solutions already proven to work—ecological farming practices rooted in agroecological principles.
As AIM spends billions on research of costly and dangerous experimental technologies, we need to promote solutions already proven to work—ecological farming practices rooted in agroecological principles. Hundreds of organizations and farm groups, particularly in the global South, are doing just that and opposing the AIM agenda in the international arena. Last year, The International Alliance on Climate and Agriculture (IACA) was formed to help in this critical climate effort. IACA is bringing together civil society leaders, activists, farmers, Indigenous peoples, and other stakeholders to collectively promote ecological food systems as a major mitigation and adaptation solution to the climate crisis.
This broad grassroots coalition developed the BROAD system, which incorporates ecological farming including organic, agroecological, biodynamic and other sustainable practices that work with nature rather than destroying it. BROAD is an acronym for systems that are: 1) Biodiverse, 2) Regenerative, 3) Organic, 4) Appropriate Scale, and 5) Democratic.
Our current industrial agriculture system is responsible for at least 25 to 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, yet there is little discussion about this critical connection between food systems and climate change. Clearly, if we do not transition swiftly to ecological food systems, any hope of climate stability or world food security will be unattainable. In addition to reducing GHGs and ensuring food and water security, ecological food systems generate vital benefits such as protecting biodiversity, soil, water, wildlife, livelihoods and jobs, socioeconomic equity, and more. This, rather than speculative, experimental AI, is what we need to save food, farming, and our planet.
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For Climate Safety, Call in the Engineers
When world leaders convene at the UN next September to advance climate safety further, the world’s leading engineers should greet them with a global framework for action
Dec 25, 2018
At the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, diplomats delivered a "rulebook" to guide all countries in combating global warming. When world leaders convene at the UN next September to advance climate safety further, the world's leading engineers should greet them with a global framework for action.
This month's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland succeeded in producing a rulebook to implement the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Every UN member state signed on. But that will not be enough to head off climate catastrophe. It's time to call in the engineers.
The diplomats have read the science and know the truth: without a rapid move to a zero-carbon global energy system by mid-century, humanity will be in grave peril.
The diplomatic success at COP24 was remarkable, given relentless lobbying and foot-dragging by the fossil-fuel industry. The diplomats have read the science and know the truth: without a rapid move to a zero-carbon global energy system by mid-century, humanity will be in grave peril. In recent years, millions of people have suffered the hardships of extreme heatwaves, droughts, flood surges, powerful hurricanes, and devastating forest fires, because the Earth's temperature is already 1.1o Celsius (roughly 2o Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average. If warming exceeds 1.5oC or 2oC later this century - temperatures never experienced in the entire 10,000-year history of human civilization - the world will become vastly more dangerous.
The Paris accord commits national governments to keep temperatures "well below 2degC above pre-industrial levels and [to pursue] efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5degC above pre-industrial levels." We now have a rulebook for measuring greenhouse-gas emissions, sharing know-how, and measuring financial transfers from rich to poor countries. Yet we still lack the plans for shifting the world energy system to renewable energy by mid-century.
The diplomats, of course, are not technical experts. The next stage needs the world's engineering experts on power generation and transmission, electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, artificial intelligence for energy systems management, urban design for energy efficiency and public transport, and related specialists. Diplomats, rather than engineers, have been at the forefront at UN climate summits for the past 24 years. The time for engineers to take center stage has arrived.
The Paris accord assumes that each government consults with its own country's engineers to devise a national energy strategy, with each of the 193 UN member states essentially producing a separate plan. That approach reflects a deep misunderstanding of how the global energy transition must work. We need solutions that are agreed and coordinated at the international scale, not country by country.
Global engineering systems require global coordination. Consider civil aviation, a triumph of globally coordinated engineering. In 2017, there were 41.8 million flights without a single fatal passenger jet accident.
The civil aviation system works so well because all countries use aircraft manufactured by a few global companies and share standard operating procedures for navigation, air traffic control, airport and airplane security, maintenance, insurance, and other operations. Other global systems are similarly coordinated. Transfers of US-dollar bank balances average a staggering $2.7 trillion per day, yet are routinely settled through the use of standardized banking and communications protocols. Billions of daily Internet activities and mobile phone calls are possible because of shared protocols. Both the scale and reliability of these globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country.
The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world's governments finally bring the engineers to the fore. Consider that in May 1961, President John F. Kennedy called on Americans to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. NASA quickly mobilized hundreds of thousands of engineers and other experts, and completed the moonshot in July 1969, meeting JFK's remarkably ambitious timeline.
I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke about carbon prices, internalizing externalities, feed-in tariffs, carbon offsets, and the like, the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. "I don't really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion," he said. "Tell us engineers the desired 'specs' and the timeline, and we'll get the job done." This is not bravado.
This will require the vast mobilization of zero-carbon energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro power, implying a power system that can handle intermittent energy sources that depend on when the sun shines, how hard the wind blows, and how fast the rivers flow.
Here are the specs. To limit warming to 1.5oC, the world's energy system must be decarbonized by mid-century. This will require the vast mobilization of zero-carbon energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro power, implying a power system that can handle intermittent energy sources that depend on when the sun shines, how hard the wind blows, and how fast the rivers flow.
This zero-carbon electricity will power electric vehicles that replace our internal-combustion engine cars. It will also be used to produce zero-carbon fuels such as hydrogen for ocean shipping and synthetic hydrocarbons for airplanes. We will heat our homes and office buildings with zero-carbon electricity rather than with coal, oil, or natural gas. And energy-intensive industries such as steel and aluminum will also replace fossil fuels with zero-carbon electricity and hydrogen.
These zero-carbon solutions will extend beyond any country's borders. The lowest-cost and most plentiful renewable energy is often found far from population centers, in deserts and mountains, and offshore for wind. This energy will therefore need to be transmitted long distances, often crossing national boundaries, with the use of special high-voltage transmission lines. The advantages of a long-distance, internationally connected transmission system have been powerfully emphasized by the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization, a worldwide partnership of engineering companies and institutions launched by the State Grid Corporation of China in 2016.
In a sensible global decarbonization plan, many of today's fossil-fuel exporting countries and companies will become tomorrow's exporters of zero-carbon energy. The oil-producing Gulf countries should export solar energy from the vast Arabian Desert to both Europe and Asia. Coal-producing Australia should export solar power from the enormous outback to Southeast Asia via submarine cable. Canada should increase its exports of zero-carbon hydropower to the US market and finally end its efforts to export products from its high-carbon oil sands.
At the Katowice climate conference, the diplomats delivered the climate rulebook on time and as promised - an enormous accomplishment. The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot. When heads of state convene at the UN next September, the world's leading engineers should greet them with a cutting-edge framework for global action.
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With Sights Set on COP22, Group Offers Roadmap for 'Fair Future' in Warming World
A sustainable solution to the climate crisis will also work to alleviate poverty and seek climate justice, says Friends of the Earth Germany
Oct 28, 2016
At the upcoming United Nations climate conference in Morocco, negotiations for how to fulfill COP21's agreement to limit global warming to 1.5o Celsius must emphasize methods that will also alleviate poverty and climate injustice, rather than leaning on "questionable technologies" such as geoengineering and carbon offset, says Friends of the Earth (FOE) Germany.
"We cannot count on unproven, costly, and ecologically risky negative emission technologies to save us from climate chaos."
--Hubert Weiger,
Friends of the Earth Germany
That's the argument put forth in the group's new report, "A change of course: How to build a fair future in a 1.5 degree world" (pdf, in German), published Friday alongside the German Catholic Bishops' Organisation for Development Cooperation (MISEREOR) and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
The climate conference will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from November 7-18.
The report takes aim at popular so-called "negative emissions" technologies, such as geoengineering, carbon offset regimes, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), arguing that leaders must pursue true sustainability instead.
"The fatal flaw of all negative emissions technology proposals is this: The hope for an atmospheric line of credit allows today's urgent need for radical reductions in CO2 emissions to fall by the wayside," the report argues. "What's currently Plan B is in fact the best way to force Plan A into the background--a fundamentally different economy, one that preserves the planet for all forms of life."
Instead of such "questionable technologies," the report argues for policies that have poverty reduction and climate justice as their central focus.
"In reaction to the Paris Agreement, we need to phase out coal, speed up the transition to renewables, phase out combustion engines, and protect and restore forests and soils," explained Hubert Weiger, chairman of Friends of the Earth Germany, in a statement.
"It is crystal clear that effective climate protection and equitable, sustainable development can only be considered together," added Heinrich Boll Foundation president Barbara Unmussig:
A future without climate chaos for all human beings on our planet is only possible if we don't pin our hopes on large-scale technologies. Instead, we have to make sure that the energy and agricultural transitions are being pushed forward as fast as possible. Technological fixes such as geoengineering are betting on future possibilities such as sucking CO2 from the atmosphere or keeping sunlight away from the Earth. This is a dangerous distraction from the necessary steps that we can already implement today. The coming-into-force of the Paris Agreement asks for exactly this change in course.
"As northern countries that have caused the climate catastrophe, we need to lead by example," Weiger continued. "We cannot count on unproven, costly, and ecologically risky negative emission technologies to save us from climate chaos. If we postpone implementing the traditional climate mitigation solutions, we will miss the rapidly closing window of opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees."
Indeed, new research has shown that the goal to limit warming to 1.5o is already a long-shot.
"The vague hope that we could all survive in a world that is 3 degrees warmer than before industrialization is deceptive," said Pirmin Spiegel, director general of MISEREOR. "It is our responsibility to safeguard the lives of millions of people by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. This is not only a technological challenge; instead, it has widespread societal and cultural implications that we all have to face."
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World is Warming at Rate 'Unprecedented' for 1,000 Years
'People who think this is over are viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. This is a chronic problem for society for the next 100 years'
Aug 30, 2016
Another day, another dire warning about the global climate emergency.
NASA's top climate scientist announced Tuesday that the Earth is warming at a pace not seen in at least the past 1,000 years, making it "very unlikely" that global temperatures will stay below the 1.5degC limit agreed to in the landmark climate treaty negotiated in Paris last December.
"In the last 30 years, we've really moved into exceptional territory," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the Guardian. "It's unprecedented in 1,000 years. There's no period that has the trend seen in the 20th century in terms of the inclination [of temperatures]."
"Maintaining temperatures below the 1.5degC guardrail requires significant and very rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions or coordinated geo-engineering," he continued, referring to controversial environmental manipulations. "That is very unlikely. We are not even yet making emissions cuts commensurate with keeping warming below 2degC."
The announcement comes amid a growing body of research--month after month after month--that shows 2016 is shaping up to be the warmest year in recorded history.
"It's the long-term trend we have to worry about though and there's no evidence it's going away and lots of reasons to think it's here to stay," Schmidt said. "There's no pause or hiatus in temperature increase. People who think this is over are viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. This is a chronic problem for society for the next 100 years."
Over the past century, temperatures began to rise at a rate that is 10 times faster than historical averages, according to research by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That means the Earth will warm up "at least" 20 times faster than historical average in the coming 100 years, NASA said.
In fact, the Guardian notes, "a NASA reconstruction shows that the pace of temperature increase over recent decades outstrips anything that has occurred since the year 500."
Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported Monday, a group of experts gathering at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa this week announced that human activities such as industrialization, nuclear bomb testing, and increased greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming have so "profoundly altered the planet" that they have ushered in a new epoch--the Anthropocene.
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All the King's Horses and All the King's Men: Why Humpty Dumpty Can't Be Put Back Together Again
"While there is no use crying over spilt milk, when the cow and the grass have also died, there might be some call for remorse." ~DHG
Apr 17, 2016
"While there is no use crying over spilled milk, when the cow and the grass have also died, there might be some call for remorse." ~DHG
I have on clear nights taking to staring at the stars in vain. My, no doubt, pseudo-ponderous ponderings have led me into contemplation of what I call the "Planetary Civilization Germination Rate (PCGR)." You see, in the Milky Way alone, there are estimated to be about 100 billion Earth-like planets. And yet, we do seem to be very much alone. It is an interesting exercise to imagine reasons why that might be so, the apparent aloneness that is. For me -seeing the difficulty that we are having in finding a reasonable way for all of us to live together decently on this little planet- I wonder if in fact the PCGR is very low.
Maybe in fact, when a super-predator such as ourselves arises to the point it overwhelms all other life-forms on the planet and the planetary life-support systems themselves, it simply cannot find a way to live in peace, both with its other same-species members, and well, everything else which genetically, biologically, chemically, and geophysically is really its extended body. Nature, with all those planets to work with (and an estimated 50 sextillion in the universe) may not care that its odds of producing a species -that is powerful enough to take over a planet, and yet intelligent enough not to destroy itself and its planet- are so, well, astronomically low.
And yet what is so frustrating about our situation here on Earth, is that we are so tantalizingly - so reach out right in front of you - palpably close to being able to create a Golden Age of peace, justice, equality, and abundance for all, the likes of which humanity has never known, and the likes of which it has been searching for in its bosom since the time we shambled forth from the African savannahs so long ago. We have the means, the technologies, and the resources to provide every child on the planet with a world-class education, world-class health care, and world-class dignity in terms of clean water, clean air, clean energy, a verdant living environment, and a safe, dignified, happy home. Really, all it would take would be the level of "investment" that America makes in one or two of its failed wars. All it would take would be a sustained -we're all in this together- Great Transition for a decade or two at the most.
We are so close, also, to another alternative. The hands of the doomsday clock of the Atomic Scientists have been moved to 3 minutes before midnight. I cannot say how many years that translates into, but I do know, in terms of climate change, we are within years, or a decade or two at the very most of falling off a cliff from which it will be exceedingly difficult to climb back up, those of us that is who have survived the fall. There are four recent papers that must give us pause: pause at the insanity of policymakers who think they are being reasonable when they are not; pause in our own daily actions when we think we can go on as we have been going on when we cannot. The first paper points out that we have only half the "carbon budget" we thought we had: Paris my friends, is out the window. The second indicates that multimeter sea level rise is very possible within 50 years: London, New York, Shanghai, etc., etc., are also out the window, too, with only their tops visible above the waves. The third paper points out that CO2 emissions are at a pace where frankly there is no analog : we simply don't know what is going to happen or how bad it's going to get. The fourth's sobering analysis is that most of the major proposed geoengineering schemes, are either too dangerous, or inadequate, or both: so forget that easy Promethean Hail Mary.
So what do we do? The best solution is a Great Transition. We must go all out now for a fair-for-all version of a sustainable Earthly Paradise. Either that or what's left of us after the fall will spend whatever time is left, tearing apart whoever else has also barely managed to survive.
The seeds of the new world are all there: the seeds of justice, equality, health, and joyously free creativity. The soil is all set and the conditions are just right. The problem is the boots of the rich and the powerful who seem to want a world where they continue to live off the corpses of what might have been.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Government.
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