Klein never said that it was the researchers avoiding the hard work. And in that, I agree with her completely. Politicians, heads of large corporations and other concentrations of power are nearly all playing a game of "kick the can down the street". Eventually we'll reach a point where whoever is in power when things hit the fan will have to reach for whatever solution is available, and geoengineering will be at the top of the list. This is why I think it's absolutely critical that we do as much research into geo. technologies as possible before there's a political incentive for people in government to "do something about it". I want those decisions to be as well informed as possible.
I also see a problem at the "retail activist" level, with all the members of one green group or another who are adamant that we simply can't tell newcomers how serious climate change is out of fear we'll scare them away from activism. I've heard this dozens of times both locally as well as around the US from people who should be doing vigorous outreach to mainstream consumers and voters. The truly frightening part is that the people saying this almost never understand how urgent the situation is; many of them still cling to the notion that we can "fix" CC in just a few years by recycling, changing our light bulbs, and driving a hybrid. I honestly don't know how much blame the green groups should get for that, i.e. for not educating their own members, and how much is simply human psychology at work. On Tuesday, September 10, 2013 7:56:33 AM UTC-4, Ken Caldeira wrote: > > Naomi Klein is wrong. > > I do not see any substantial subset of people researching geoengineering > who see it as a way to avoid doing the hard work of reducing emissions. > > For most, researching 'geoengineering' is an expression of despair at the > fact that others are unwilling to do the hard work of reducing emissions. > > > _______________ > Ken Caldeira > > Carnegie Institution for Science > Dept of Global Ecology > 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA > +1 650 704 7212 kcal...@carnegiescience.edu <javascript:> > http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira > > > > > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:28 AM, Andrew Lockley > <andrew....@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> Poster's note : short extract below discussing geoengineering. Full >> interview is very good. It basically describes why I left the green >> movement - they're all out of ideas and they have no solutions left. I >> don't agree with her conclusions, however - especially on geoengineering. >> >> >> http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/naomi_klein_big_green_groups_are_crippling_the_environmental_movement_partner/ >> >> You were talking about the Clean Development Mechanism as a sort of >> disaster capitalism. Isn’t geoengineering the ultimate disaster capitalism? >> >> I certainly think it’s the ultimate expression of a desire to avoid doing >> the hard work of reducing emissions, and I think that’s the appeal of it. I >> think we will see this trajectory the more and more climate change becomes >> impossible to deny. A lot of people will skip right to geoengineering. The >> appeal of geoengineering is that it doesn’t threaten our worldview. It >> leaves us in a dominant position. It says that there is an escape hatch. So >> all the stories that got us to this point, that flatter ourselves for our >> power, will just be scaled up. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "geoengineering" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
