Re:Can Geoengineering Fix Climate Change?
by wongarsu on Saturday October 02, 2021 @11:11AM
(#28729173)
I'm not sure what "doing nothing" would look like if we don't mean "continue on our current path".
The entire set of Western values as cemented by the Cold War seems incompatible with "less economic activity". And even if we somehow shake consumerism, modern agriculture is essential to feeding more than 1B humans and requires a significant amount of industrial scale economic activity.
The majority of the time "buy/make this thing to reduce climate change" is a mere distraction. But there are a lot of resources that we can afford to spend, some of which are near-limitless if you consider predictable advances like asteroid mining. If we find ways to spend those resources to get us at least part way out of this mess, or to buy us time for societal change, then those are paths worth pursuing.
The entire set of Western values as cemented by the Cold War seems incompatible with "less economic activity". And even if we somehow shake consumerism, modern agriculture is essential to feeding more than 1B humans and requires a significant amount of industrial scale economic activity.
The majority of the time "buy/make this thing to reduce climate change" is a mere distraction. But there are a lot of resources that we can afford to spend, some of which are near-limitless if you consider predictable advances like asteroid mining. If we find ways to spend those resources to get us at least part way out of this mess, or to buy us time for societal change, then those are paths worth pursuing.