Folks, On Wednesday, I got an email from the Guardian's business section asking if I could knock out 800 words on business opportunities in geoengineering on a tight deadline.
So, I spent about 45 minutes writing something I thought they could use, and then about 15 minutes the next morning going over their edit. My main points were that there is no obvious substantial pot of money to be made in solar geoengineering, and the near-term profit opportunities for industrialized direct air capture probably have little to do with reducing climate risk, and probably a lot to do with helping oil companies pump more oil or helping powerful military organizations to drop more bombs. Somehow this got put under the headline of "Geoengineering: It could be a money-making opportunity for business" which does not really reflect the main thrust of my comments. People who don't bother to try to understand what I actually say don't get that I am saying that there is little near-term profit potential in the forms of geoengineering I consider. Given only 800 words, one cannot hope to be comprehensive, so please do not tell me all the things I failed to say. http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/feb/11/climate-engineering-money-opportunity-business If carbon prices get high enough and the cost of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere could be made low enough, there may be potential for profit in the business of removing carbon dioxide. In contrast, it is hard to see how substantial profits can be made from global-scale albedo modification efforts. ... If we think society will get serious about the climate problem soon, then investing in near-zero emission energy technologies could be the winning ticket. Unfortunately, the global community is not terribly serious about reducing emissions, and much venture capital has been lost on creative new start-ups in the energy sector. The longer we take to transform our energy system so it no longer uses the sky as a waste dump, the more likely that we will have to rely on climate intervention technologies. Best, Ken _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://kencaldeira.com https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira My assistant is Dawn Ross <[email protected]>, with access to incoming emails. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
