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"Stopping digging" is a coordination problem on the global scale, with no one to actually coordinate it or enforce penalties on defectors. Injecting sulfur int
by throwanem 3y ago
"Stopping digging" is a coordination problem on the global scale, with no one to actually coordinate it or enforce penalties on defectors.
Injecting sulfur into the stratosphere is a simple enough problem that many governments, and a few individuals, could be doing it within a few years.
I agree that the first of those is preferable to the second; it's just that the first of those isn't going to happen.
- SoftTalker 3y agoWell the penalties will be enforced, by Mother Nature.
- throwanem 3y agoNo. The environment will become (is becoming) less habitable for everyone, not only for those responsible.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI haven't set foot in a church in probably 30 years, except as a tourist for some that are architecturally notable.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoSulfur injection may be technically easy, and who knows: it might even work. But it won't happen as long as large parts of our society debate whether climate change is serious. This kind of geoengineering requires a level of political consensus and commitment that we don't have (and that has been actively been thwarted by political parties and emitting industries.)
- mrguyorama 3y agoIf the people who don't believe we have measurably changed the earth's environment by dumping carbon into the air for centuries suddenly decide that dumping sulfur emissions into the air is something we must avoid because it COULD measurably change our atmosphere I think it's time to consider them actively hostile actors.
- throwanem 3y agoI omitted to enumerate corporations above. Plenty of those have the resources for it, Exxon and BP included - the estimates I've seen are in the order of tens of millions of dollars per year, with capex amortization included. It's not as if oil companies haven't known about the externalities for a long time, probably longer than a lot of participants in this discussion have been alive. Do you think they're more likely to declare their entire business model obsolete and close shop, or to investigate the option?
- matthewdgreen 3y agoResource extraction companies have huge investments in existing and future wells. They're not dumb -- they know that continued extraction of fossil fuels at today's rate isn't sustainable -- but they also know that their current stock price is propped up by the perception that it is. The game here is to extend the period of time during which those resources can be plausibly exploited. Every additional year translates into trillions of dollars. Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. These companies aren't good or evil, they're just amoral: and they'll do everything they can to prevent and delay that consensus from forming, even if (1) sulfur injection wouldn't directly hurt their business, and (2) opposing action kills us all.
- throwanem 3y ago> Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. Would it? The entire global economy runs on those resources. I think you're overestimating how willing governments and publics worldwide would be to accept "spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" over "change literally everything about how everyone lives everywhere," especially when the second one has a cost in lives much more easily measured (and propagandized!) than the first.
- c1sc0 3y agoDoes it, though? Isn’t this a rich individual or small group of individuals can pull off in clandestine ways? Or at least get started developing the technology for? I know there are people on this forum who are doing exactly that.