http://metadelusion.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/geoengineering-is-ultimate-business-as.html?m=1
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Geoengineering is the ultimate business as usual
You may have read Naomi Klein’s recent Salon interview in which she posits
that "Green groups may be more damaging than climate change deniers", and
Joe Romm’s noticeably shrill response on ClimateProgress. In my view Romm
was honor-bound to give the critique he gave. The one thing he can’t allow
Klein or anyone else to say is that the fix is in, i.e. that fossil fuel
corporations have captured government, because that would make his chirpy
"better living through green technology" spiel irrelevant, if not
duplicitous. Yet the latest IEA numbers clearly show that the global plan
is to extract and burn more fossil fuel, not less, while simultaneously
testing and deploying a mixed bag of geoengineering methods ("all of the
above"). Research into both CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) and SRM (Solar
Radiation Management) is already well underway in many countries, thanks to
major funding from the usual suspects.The remaining fossil fuels and their
corresponding infrastructure are the most valuable assets ever to exist in
human history, by far, but they’re also the largest sunk costsever to
exist. In economic theory, sunk costs aren’t supposed to influence
decisions, but observed behavior is often less than ideal. To suppose that
fossil fuel corporations and their equivalent state actors would willingly
abandon such monumental investments, by writing them off as stranded
assets, is naive. On the contrary, their business model assumes that the
remaining fossil fuels will not only be sold, but sold at ever-increasing
prices, i.e. their plan is to profit from scarcity. Geoengineering is seen
as just another cost of doing business, its risks quantifiable and subject
to standard depreciation.Between now and 2040, humanity will emit another
teraton of CO2, because the alternative is collapse of the ultimate scam,
AKA the world economy, which operates by looting posterity. China is
already the world’s largest consumer of automobiles, and is busily
constructing an interstate highway system three times the size of
America’s. We’re reduced to helping them: the Alberta sands are destined
for them, not us. This is not only because the fossil fuel dynasties seek
to preserve their advantages, but more deeply because geoengineering
epitomizes humanity’s exceptionalist narrative, which claims that our
success flows directly from our specialness, heroism, and ingenuity. The
possibility that our success was merely a predictable consequence of the
fossil fuel windfall, and therefore temporary and doomed from the start, is
as unthinkable as comparing humanity to yeast in a bottle (as William R.
Catton and many others have).Klein might argue that a sufficiently militant
and global popular revolution could delay or even prevent this grim
development, but I wouldn’t count on it. Contrary to popular belief, I’m
not a religious person, but if I were, I would pray that
geoengineering works.
Chris Korda at 2:32 AM
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