Geoengineering as global climate change policy

Abstract

The use of hydrocarbon-based energy systems is deeply embedded in the contemporary global capitalist world system. Billions of individuals always are already engaged in an on-going, essentially unplanned, and still uncontrolled (with regard to the negative impact of burning fossil on the global climate) collective experiment in the growing use of these sources of energy. The unanticipated, and yet still long observed, tendency for this energy system, to coincide with atmospheric global warming and other severe climate problems is becoming one of the most interesting developments of the early twenty-first century. In the absence of more effective, comprehensive, and bold efforts to prevent global climate change in a truly sustained manner, many communities around the world, ranging from the smallest localities, city governments, regional authorities, and even nation states are acknowledging that global climate change is a real problem. Yet, there is no consensus about how to mitigate and manage its effects. This study considers to what degree formal geoengineering is being treated as a workable approach to managing climate change. It explores an elaborate discourse trying to judge which high tech intervention might be more likely to succeed at averting, postponing, or merely managing the more destructive implications of climate change. Hence, the article advances a critique of such schemas as something like a ‘miracle cure’ for global warming.