Abandoning Progress

Some things are as they are. Everyone agrees that global warming is drastic but what we need to do about it is perplexing. A sense of urgency has taken hold. The more the Sciences tell us about the world the more we see clearly, and that will help us reduce the social aspect of science. Growing detached of our ideas of economic progress and our over consumptive behaviors will, over time, help us in trying to achieve the good common world. These are the things we have to continue to be concerned about.

To make life out of nothing, engineering the cooling of the planet by injecting sulphate particles into the atmosphere, is not a modest intervention and a band-aid cure for slowing the warming of the planet as a placeholder for future research. At least we might know of one way to move if need be. Some things we need to do rapidly. This new interest of geoengineering was set off by and article written by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and published in the journal of Climate Change in August of 2006. He believes that political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is needed, and radical it is! His claim that injecting sulphates into the stratosphere would postpone the effects of emissions control and buy the time needed for emissions reductions to start having an effect. Crutzen’s matter-of-fact way of framing the issue is striking. He points out that mankind already puts more than 100 million tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere every year that sits lower in the atmosphere in the air we breathe and does us no good and contributes to 500,000 premature deaths every year. However, introducing sulpher into the stratosphere every year only seems that it would get rid off the short-term effects of global warming and does not address the real need for change in our behavior, to abandon progress – economic mainly – because we have to slow down.