What if we could stop climate change in its tracks? It might sound impossible, but cutting-edge engineering could make it a reality. Welcome to The Environmentalist, your column for understanding the natural world. Today we will be exploring geoengineering and the dangerous gamble that might just save planet earth.
For context, there are two main approaches to climate action: adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation includes the activities that involve adjusting to present and future climate change effects, like sea barriers that prevent flooding. Mitigation involves reducing climate change by tackling its sources, like how an increased use of renewable energies would reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Geoengineering fits into both mitigation and adaptation methods.
Geoengineering has been defined as the intentional large-scale manipulation of the environment to oppose negative impacts of worldwide climate change. Geoengineering encompasses two main types of actions. The first action is removing and storing atmospheric CO2, also known as carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which would result in lowering the Greenhouse Effect, reducing effects of global warming. An example of CDR is direct air capture, which involves machines removing CO2 from the air and utilizing it as a source of energy or storing it underground. The second action is reflecting sunlight away from earth, also known as solar radiation management (SRM), which would result in less solar radiation heating our planet.
You might be asking yourself, why go to such drastic extents? Climate change is getting worse and the current actions being taken are not fast enough for what our current situation requires. We keep seeing temperatures rise, extreme weather events, melting ice caps, and rising sea levels. Geoengineering offers potential opportunities to have a positive impact on our climate. Moreover, there are myriad benefits, the main ones being that geoengineering doesn’t aim to stop climate change, but actively reverses it by returning a more stable atmospheric CO2 concentration. It is also said that the results would be rapid and have the potential to create a variety of new jobs.
Sadly, it is not all sugar, spice, and everything nice. Most of the research done on the topic is only theoretical and based on computer simulations, so there are many uncertainties. We don’t really know what the consequences of these actions might be and a huge portion of the necessary technology does not exist. On top of that, it might be financially infeasible. There are also ethical issues, since it is unclear who would be primarily affected and who would decide the application of geoengineering.
Luckily, there has been a lot of development in geoengineering. The carbon capture sector is growing, so it is not the time to lose faith; especially since we are in desperate need of effective climate solutions. As The Lorax once said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” So, let’s care.
