CLIMATE:
ARE WE HAVING THE RIGHT DISCUSSION?
W.
Hall
“It
is strange that geoengineering is being promoted enthusiastically by a number of
(Clive Hamilton: The
Return of Dr. Strangelove)
Also see video
“A
number of right-wing think tanks actively denying climate change are also
promoting geoengineering, an irony that seems to escape them.”
(Clive Hamilton: An
Evil Atmosphere is formed around Geoengineering)
Geoengineering
has a long, though marginal, prehistory as a tendency in the scientific and
political debate on climate. It has not made any appreciable impact on the
climate debate here in Greece, where the key climate science personalities, the
people who represent this country at the international conferences of the IPCC,
etc., have for years dismissed it out of hand and actively sabotaged any
discussion of it.
That
is now beginning to change under the impact of the Climategate scandal preceding
last year’s Copenhagen Climate Summit. In the new post-Copenhagen conjuncture
there is both more climate change skepticism and more public advocacy of
geoengineering. That is on the face of it absurd, but
a message that would be incoherent and incomprehensible if addressed to a single
audience can retain an appearance of coherence if its two components are
targeted at different audiences: the geoengineering advocacy at ecologists and
leftists, the skepticism at conservatives.
Newcomers
to the discussion, e.g. the American
writer and film-maker Michael
Murphy, who is so much of a newcomer that he is more or less a climate
change skeptic himself, are advantaged by contrast, because they will not be
tempted to fight the climate skeptic/geoengineers as climate skeptics. They will
fight them as geoengineers.
The
point made in the quotations at the head of this article - the
irrationality (in terms of formal logic) of the skeptics’ adoption of
“solutions” to problems whose existence they have denied for decades
– is valid. If political
conditions were different, or became
different, the absurdity of the skeptic/geoengineer’s intellectual stance
would be recognized as something
monstrous, something comparable to the worst political aberrations of the
twentieth century. What would be demanded would not be civilized co-existence
with the skeptic/geoengineers but their political marginalization and
eradication.
It
has of course been argued for years by climate scientists and activists that
“the skeptics” have no place in the climate debate, and should be excluded
from it. That is far easier said than done when “freedom of speech”,
particularly in the U.S,. is an
article of faith for so many. But in
any case, the skeptics are too strong to be excludable from the political
debate, or even from the scientific debate. And the corporate mass media ensure
that the more they are excluded from scientific discussion the more confident
they can be of a popular following.
Climate activists’ ambivalence about geoengineering
The main difficulty faced by climate activists in
opposing skeptic/geoengineers as geoengineers is simply that climate activists
themselves, if they know about geoengineering, are often ambivalent about it. The
ambivalence can be seen even in such a hard-hitting analysis as Alex Steffen’s
excellent “Geoengineering
and the new climate denialism”:
“Megascale geoengineering”, Steffen writes, “. (should not be)…. a taboo
subject. We need a smart debate…., where we explore the subject honestly and
without industry spin…. Ethical people -- whether geoengineering proponents,
opponents or doubters -- all need to be extremely clear in saying that a strong,
rapid movement
away from fossil fuels and toward climate neutrality is non-negotiable. Many
leading thinkers on geoengineering (such as Paul Crutzen and Ken Caldeira)
already make clear that immediate action on reducing greenhouse pollution (on
both the national and global levels) is the first step, period. We should follow
their lead… (And) we should only turn to megascale geoengineering as a last
resort…. Legitimate debates about the possible uses of megascale
geoengineering should not include people whose institutions have been
consistently and intentionally dishonest about science and science policy.”
What Alex Steffen is demanding, in other words, is that geoengineering be
kept on the table as a policy option but that “climate change skeptics” be
excluded from discussing it. . That is not a realistic demand, and if there ever
was any hope that it was realistic,
that hope - in the time since
Steffen published his article (April
2009) – has disappeared because,
as indicated, Copenhagen and Climategate have weakened the position of climate
science and climate activists and strengthened both climate change skepticism
and the advocacy of geoengineering by climate change skeptics.
The demand for a debate “where we explore the subject honestly and
without industry spin” is a demand for a a different political system and in
fact a different world. The rules that apply today require admission to industry
spin on grounds of free speech. This in itself is enough to guarantee that the
role of “the ethical people” will be reactive and oppositional. And when
corporations rather than government make even further inroads and begin to take
on the task of organizing the scientific seminars and conferences themselves,
corporate control becomes absolute.
Of course some leading proponents of geoengineering have, in parallel
with role of geoengineering advocate, for
years also been playing the role of oppositionist to geoengineering. David
Keith is one such person. Note these words of his from
the February 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
geoengineering conference in San Diego: “I think that the more we do research,
the less easy this (spraying of sulphate aerosols) will look, the more
complicated the environmental effects will appear. And that’s a good thing,
because right now it looks too easy. So I think if we do more research we’re
likely to find out that it’s harder and more complicated than we thought, and
the side effects are harder to manage, and that’s a healthy outcome.”
Geoengineer Alan Robock is another oppositionist. He has
given us “Twenty Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea”.
His article
was originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but it has
now also been honoured with an approving link to it from the anti-geoengineering
“Hands off Mother Earth” website. And
Paul Crutzen, in the 2006 paper on
stratospheric sulphur injections that put him in the media spotlight for several
months, was also oppositional: “Again I must stress… that the albedo
enhancement scheme should only be deployed when there are proven net advantages
and in particular when rapid climate warming is developing… . Importantly, its
possibility should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies.” “
The very best would be if emissions of the greenhouse gases could be reduced so
much that the stratospheric sulfur release experiment would not need to take
place.”
Perhaps this oppositional orientation has something to do with a
recognized necessity to secure public trust if there is to be a move towards
open implementation of geoengineering programmes. Crutzen stresses the
requirement of trust: “Building
trust between scientists and the general public would be needed to make such a
large-scale climate modification acceptable.”
The same point has been made more recently by Britain’s Royal Society:
“Public attitudes towards geoengineering, and public engagement in the
development of individual methods proposed, will have a critical bearing on its
future. Perception of the risks involved, levels of trust in those undertaking
research or implementation, and the transparency of actions, purposes and vested
interests, will determine the political feasibility of geoengineering. If
geoengineering is to play a role in reducing climate change, an active and
international programme of public and civil society dialogue will be required to
identify and address concerns about potential environmental, social and economic
impacts and unintended consequences.”
If one is to speak of trust, I
can think of two occasions where I have seen scientists associated with
geoengineering being put to
something like a trustworthiness test. Once
was with Alan Robock, who outside the AAAS conference in San Diego consented to
being videoed in informal street
discussion with anti-geoengineering activists, in this way providing some
insight into what unscripted interaction between geoengineers and “the
public” looks like. The result did not encourage either respect for the
activists or trust for Alan Robock.
The other occasion was with Paul Crutzen, during the time that his
stratospheric sulphur article was receiving media publicity.
I was involved in an attempt at that time to organize, via an American
institute in Athens, Greece, a video conference
on his geoengineering proposals, including on one side Crutzen and on the
other the American farm defence activist Rosalind Peterson. The institute
declared willingness in principle to host the discussion, Rosalind Peterson was
willing to participate. It was Paul
Crutzen that was unwilling or unable to take advantage of this presumed
opportunity to win some of that absent “public trust”. Why?
Good cops and bad cops
There is a division of roles among geoengineers: “good cops” and
“bad cops”. Those we have mentioned so far are all good cops. Their
discourse makes many concessions to the sensibilities of climate scientists and
climate change activists. Their key themes are caution, prudence, responsibility.
They certainly have no sympathy for the “climate change skeptic” viewpoint.
By contrast the bad cop geoengineers
are typically people who are in, or who have come from, the weapons
laboratories. They too make concessions to a wider public. But the section of
the public they propitiate and flatter are the anthropogenic climate change
skeptics. And the indulgence of the skeptic viewpoint is
not something that has emerged only recently, as part of the recent public
strengthening of climate skepticism. It
has been present from the beginning
of the discussion, from as early as Edward Teller’s 1998 “Sunscreen
for Planet Earth” article and doubtless even before that.
Teller was the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove and is
probably the only member of the Western power elite with whom Mikhail Gorbachev
refused to shake hands. His
“Sunscreen for Planet Earth” is the template for the stance cited
by Clive Hamilton in the quotes at the beginning of this text:
“If the politics of global warming
require that ‘something must be done’ while we still don't know whether
anything really needs to be done--let alone what exactly--let us play to
our uniquely American strengths in innovation and technology to offset any
global warming by the least costly means possible. While scientists continue
research into any global climatic effects of greenhouse gases, we ought to study
ways to offset any possible ill effects. Injecting sunlight-scattering particles
into the stratosphere appears to be a promising approach. Why not do that?”
In other words geoengineering is the solution to this possibly non-existent
problem. .
Teller was the driving force behind not only the hydrogen bomb but also
President Reagan’s “Star Wars” anti-missile system. The
disingenuous logic of “Sunscreen
for Planet Earth” is nothing more or less than a continuation of the
mechanisms perfected by Teller
during his long career as a weapons scientist, not least in the “Star Wars”
proposals that were placed on the negotiating table at the 1986 Reykjavik
Summit. At Reykjavik, Reagan (i.e. Teller) proposed total destruction of Soviet
and American nuclear arsenals in exchange for acceptance by the Soviets of
America’s “Star Wars” system for shooting down the nuclear missiles whose
abolition had just been negotiated. Gorbachev
rejected the proposal “as a matter of principle”. It was not, he said,
acceptable or rational to consent to the construction of a system the purpose
for which it had just been agreed
should and could be eliminated. That was his opinion. Teller, who had the
support of the international media, succeeded in communicating a different
message: Gorbachev was responsible
for rejecting an American proposal for total abolition of the superpowers’
nuclear arsenals (a proposal which, by the way, startled and shocked European
leaders).
We may infer from this that the skeptics were
shoved into Teller’s bag of
tricks to play the same role as the
United States’ nuclear arsenal at Reykjavik: a “persuader” to be held in
reserve, with withdrawal offered on condition of consent to the “solution”
proposed by Teller: an anti-missile shield for shooting down prospectively
non-existent nuclear missiles, a “sunscreen” of global aerosol spraying as a
solution to putatively non-existent anthropogenic global warming.
The parallels between
geoengineering and the nuclear arms race are blatant: “Both are big,
technocratic operations that can potentially put an end to civilization as we
know it….” “Just as the central question of the nuclear age was how to
keep a Doctor Strangelove from pushing the button, the central question of the
geoengineering age will be how to prevent a Dr. Strangelove from hacking the
climate.” An MIT physicist with a
weapons lab background says: “A
single person can now engineer a microbe that could kill millions of people.
Terrorists can use a jet to crash into the World Trade Center. Now one nation,
or even one person, can manipulate the entire earth’s climate…” How do you
stop someone – or some state – from trying to take control of the climate:
That is a very interesting question. ….You have countries like Russia, which
actually like global warming, because they want to get at the oil and gas in the
Arctic. How would they react to someone trying to cool the planet.?”
It is no solution to pass legislation banning geoengineering. “Here in
the United States, we can pass laws saying “Thou shalt not fill the
stratosphere with particles”, but they’re not going to carry a lot of weight
in Russia or Brazil. Ideally, the governments of Russia and Brazil will pass
their own laws, and a global consensus will emerge. But what if (a consensus
doesn’t emerge)?”[1]
Teller died in 2003 but was succeeded in his mad (and evil) scientist
role by Lowell Wood. Without
possessing anything of the Central European
Jewish background that may help to explain, without decriminalizing, the
mentality of the late Edward Teller, Wood is evidently proud to be able to show
the world that “Edward Teller is not dead”, continuing the Teller tradition
of successfully instrumentalizing absolutely everything in this world and beyond
it in the interest of pursuing his
chosen projects.
How to Cool the Planet
In April of this year (2010) Jeff Goodell, the Rolling
Stone journalist who four years ago wrote the first PR spiel for Lowell Wood’s
geoengineering plans (“Can Dr. Evil Save the World”) published a post-Copenhagen
book on geoengineering entitled “How to Cool the Planet”. It is worth
engaging with its content, in my opinion, because
Goodell from his own characteristically “good cop” perspective
appears to be sincere in the unease he expresses at
how geoengineering is moving under the control of the bad cops.
I am trying to frame my exposition in such a way that it can connect with
the concerns of two different audiences: firstly
the opponents of geoengineering who support the campaign of the ETC group and
the other NGOs calling for “Hands off Mother Earth”, secondly the chemtrails
activists whose claim is that geoengineering is not just a matter of proposals,
or of a twinkle in the eye of Lowell Wood, David Keith and friends, (and the
Chinese and Russians and Richard Branson and Bill Gates), but a well-entrenched
reality of global dimensions, in full application for well over a decade. (They
base this assertion on the evidence of the senses.)
Chemtrails activists typically also claim that the spraying they observe
does not serve (only?) the purpose of geoengineering but in fact (additionally?)
serves other even more sinister, and indeed criminal, purposes. Any objection
from a chemtrails activist to what I now recommend should be accompanied by full
details of the suggested alternative
strategy for abolishing the well-established global reality.
I would argue that a focus on the demand that Alex Steffen puts forward
for “a smart debate” on geoengineering ….”where we explore the subject
honestly and without industry spin….”, in other words an alliance with the
“good cop” geoengineers against the “bad cop” geoengineers, is possibly
the only way of resolving the deadlock that chemtrails activists have been in
for years as a result of stigmatization as “conspiracy theorists”.
It is in any case a strategy that I judge should be tried out.
At a public
presentation of Goodell’s book in Seattle in April 2010, a
“chemtrails” activist Rebecca Campbell made an attempt to expose its
author as a “disinfo agent”, asking both him and the audience rhetorically
if they ever look at the sky.
Ms Campbell’s intervention was not effective.
I do not
believe that the exhortation to look at the sky is an appropriate way to handle
an exponent of the “good cop”
version of support for geoengineering. Goodell
makes it perfectly clear in his book that a key criterion (legally and
politically speaking) in the geoengineering discussion
is “intentionality”, and that once it is admitted that weather and
climate modification is being carried out deliberately, the question of
“climate justice” will arise. And because Goodell and the “good cop”
geoengineers generally are not willing, or do not feel able, to provide
leadership for such a global “climate justice” crusade (for one thing they
fear the power of the climate skeptics to whip up public hysteria against them)
they feel obliged to persist in their position that no intentional
geoengineering programmes are in operation.
If one applies traditional rules of morality and
conceptions of proper procedures in
both science or statesmanship to the stance of these perhaps well-meaning
scientists (and their political and journalistic supporters) the expectations
they invest in “others” seem almost adolescent. “If we lived in a rational
world,” says Goodell , “instead of diminishing the political will to
reinvent our energy economy, the prospect of geoengineering would alarm us
enough to boost it.” This amounts to wishful thinking that exposure to the
proposals of the geoengineers could frighten
the public into support for the positions of climate change activists:
a forlorn hope that fear can be enlisted to take the place of scientific
and/or political leadership. (What distinguishes this mindset from the attitude
of oppressors throughout history?)
All the evidence suggests that fear
strengthens climate change skepticism. It does not undermine it. One of the
reflexes from which climate change skepticism derives its dynamism is its
(similarly blustering and adolescent) refusal to be frightened by “danger
mongering ecologists and leftists” (or “liberals”, to use the American
terminology). The “Global
Dimming” documentaries
screened in English-speaking countries five years ago evidently failed to
achieve their aim of increasing support for cuts in carbon emissions. The reason
for this failure, in my opinion, was the over-reliance on fear and corresponding
censoring out of focused political analysis. “Global Dimming” was portrayed
as the result of specifically non-intentional “particle pollution”, not of
geoengineering, theoretical or actual. .
Jeff Goodell’s “How to
Cool the Planet” is a step forward from the Global Dimming documentaries. In
that sense Goodell deserves the placatory congratulations that were extended to
him by Rebecca Campbell. (“I thanked Mr. Goodell for at least minimally
exposing this long-concealed subject to public view.”)
The open antagonism that Rebecca Campbell displayed to Jeff Goodell was
also displayed by the ETC group towards
the British Royal Society for its 2009 report on geoengineering.
The ETC paper, entitled “The Emperor’s New Climate: Geoengineering as
21st Century Fairytale”, offended
Ken Caldeira because of what he saw as its ad hominem approach. “It is one
thing to suggest that we are uninformed, misinformed, or even deluded, but
another thing entirely to suggest that we are acting with the intent to
“trick” people into doing things that might harm the environment. Charges
that we are acting in bad faith are unfounded, reckless, repugnant and
malicious…..If ETC really believes the emperor has no clothes, they should be
happy to join us in calls for an investigation into the emperor’s clothing.”
To respond to this in the same spirit, one could say that if “good
cop” geoengineers are really upset about the unwillingness of many ecological
NGOs to discuss or ever give a moment’s thought to the considerations that
have led scientists of good reputation (Paul Crutzen, for example) to embrace
geoengineering, then they must become more engaged with these NGOs. Is it enough
for Caldeira or Keith to flaunt a hippie past of anti-militarism and nuclear
disarmament politics suitable perhaps for impressing media audiences? If
they want their anti-militarist and anti-nuclear-weapons credentials to be
recognized by people of some significance in present-day nuclear disarmament
circles, should they not be showing some evidence of real and continuing
involvement in today’s global campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons?
Caldeira’s active opposition to the Planktos and Climos ocean fertilization
projects seems to have had some effect, suggesting that he is not without influence.
Should he not try to exert similar influence in the circles whose support for
geoengineering he wants to secure?
Why don’t Caldeira, for example, and others from among his
anti-nuclear-weapons geoengineering colleagues, spend some time talking about
geoengineering to e.g. Jonathan Granoff or other senior people at the Global
Security Institute campaigning for a
Nuclear Weapons Convention and a global ban on nuclear weapons? These people of
influence could discuss joint initiatives to achieve progress in both areas:
geoengineering and nuclear disarmament. Couldn’t
they?
If Jeff Goodell is really concerned that “well-meaning
environmentalists and do-gooders will stall funding on geoengineering research
for another decade” why doesn’t he try to find people in the international
climate justice movement who
understand how his own sense of
unsuitability for a leadership role in the fight for climate justice prevents
him from saying frankly all that he
knows about geoengineering, or articulating the arguments best suited to
embarrassing and silencing the climate change skeptics and the “bad cop”
geoengineers?
Such meetings and such discussions could lead to agreements on divisions
of labour that would provide the ANTI-geoengineering
movement also with its good cops and bad cops. Many of Goodell’s problems with
“well-meaning environmentalists and do-gooders” must after all stem from the
fact that he does not always speak to them honestly, and that sometimes when he
is dissembling, they think that he is sincere.
He says: “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere,
dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds. I hope that we will grasp the
scale of the catastrophe that awaits us, muster up the courage and political
will to cut emissions quickly and deeply, invent new energy systems that are
cheap and clean and abundant. Most of all, I hope that the whole notion of
geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance, like a
bad sci-fi novel writ large.”
He says: “I fear that geoengineering will be packaged and sold as a
quick fix. Rather than engaging
people in the act of managing the planet, it will be used as another tool to
increase our passivity – just sit back and let Big Brother take care of the
climate!”
He says: “The thing I fear most is
that we won’t do anything at all. We won’t explore geoengineering: we
won’t cut greenhouse gas pollution in any significant way; we won’t change
our lives. We will argue about it on TV and
write books and make movies and hang banners on the smokestacks of coal plants,
and nothing much will change. We will just ride into the dark apocalypse…a
future of war and starvation and disease driven by the changes on our
superheated planet.”
If he really hopes and fears these things, surely he should be trying
harder to make himself understood by people
such as Rebecca Campbell whose gut reflex is to dismiss him as a “disinfo
agent” simply because he does not register awareness of the aspect of the
situation that is of most importance to her, and indeed of most importance to
any person who comes to the climate debate through “looking at the sky”. .
Goodell quotes Lowell Wood as writing in private correspondence: “When
I talk with people who object to geoengineering, I often say. “You don’t
have to argue with me, and I don’t have to argue with you, let’s find
something more pleasant to talk about because I’m going to win.” That
sounds cynical, but it is open to question whether even such a very very
bad cop as Wood really has the courage of his own evil convictions. Far from
elaborating on his claim that it is he, Lowell Wood, who
is going to win, in his correspondence he goes on to say that
it is in fact “geoengineering”
that is going to win, and: the people “to blame” for that are the
politicians. “The politicians, when they finally come down to the crunch, are
going to ask: What is the cheapest thing that might possibly do the job? They
don’t care what it is.”
In the final analysis, all
that might be motivating Lowell Wood is concern to make money in his old age. .
After leaving the Lawrence Livermore weapons laboratory in 2007 he went into
business with an old friend who had been the chief technology officer at
Microsoft. They established a firm called Intellectual Ventures whose basic
business plan is to buy patents and license patents to interested companies,
many of them involved in geoengineering projects. .
Both the nuclear arms race and its successor the climate/geoengineering
game that is both a variation on it
and in part a consequence of it, are
largely based on fraud. The Russian nuclear arsenal, for example, was
not abolished by the “victors” when the Cold War ended and it is to say
the least very dubious whether that has anything to do with the preferences of
anyone of significance in Russia in 1991. It is certainly not due to the late
Boris Yeltsin. The question of precisely who “controls” Russian nuclear
weapons today is also one that deserves, and is not getting, investigation.
An alliance with “good cop” geoengineers can and should focus on the
fraudulent elements in the climate debate, after which it will be time to move
on to focus on the fraudulent
elements in the nuclear disarmament debate. Because everyone with the status of
“player” at the governmental level or in the international organizations
dealing with these questions either is inadequately informed or feels obliged to
dissemble, it is the Rebecca Campbells and (even moreso) the Michael Murphys
that are in the best position to lead. But for that to be possible they must
acquire the reflexes, and the level of understanding, that are required of
leaders.
Aigina, Greece, 4th
September 2010
[1]
Quotations from Chapter 9 of “How to Cool the Planet”