Amen, Mike. Given this dangerous trajectory, I'd say it's time for another reading from our experts on the ethics of alternative climate management methods. And I don't mean adaptation. Greg -------------------------------------------- On Sun, 5/31/15, Mike MacCracken <[email protected]> wrote:
Subject: [geo] On why we'll very likely need climate engineering To: "Geoengineering" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, May 31, 2015, 10:28 AM For those who argue that it is best to keep relying on mitigation as the only acceptable approach, it is because of disgraceful decisions such as described in: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-10-billion-tons-of-coal-that-could-eras e-obamas-progress-on-climate-change that this will be the case. I've done declarations for a couple of lawsuits trying to fight the leasing of such coal lands. The Administration could have acceded to their calls for a high quality environmental review of the consequences of such leasing (so including GHG effect), but instead they have fought those lawsuits and rely on a really outdated EIS (their analysis starts on page 4-130--and is only a few pages long). Or they could have imposed the social cost of carbon as an additional fee if one wants to use the free market system to level the field across technologies--but no, leases would be at very low prices. So, first, the criticism that those of us favor geoengineering first are just wrong--we've been fighting hard for mitigation. But decisions like this keep coming, and I would suggest have nothing to do with whether geoengineering might or might not help. So, we keep having to go deeper and deeper in to the barrel to try to find some way to slow the devastating consequences of warming lying ahead. Second, given decisions like this by the US, no wonder the rest of the world is not yet really making commitments that are strong enough to make a difference for the future. Truly embarrassing decision--it makes all the clamor over stopping the Keystone pipeline to limit tar sands development ring very hollow. Mike MacCracken -- 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. -- 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.
