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I suspect that unless there is a consensus or at least a large majority in favor of it, nothing will be done. Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then ther
by ColdStream 1mo ago
I suspect that unless there is a consensus or at least a large majority in favor of it, nothing will be done.
Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Their fault or not, they are going to get blamed for it and actions taken. The EU would become the scapegoat for any kind of weather/climate issues in future.
This is the trolley problem done at a global scale.
- pfisch 1mo ago>Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Who cares? Tell them to go pound sand or stop burning so much coal. Countries are already water seeding. This kind of worry that someone might complain about the eu trying to save itself is so low on the list of things that matter. Let them complain, and the eu can complain about all the other countries geoengineering by burning fossil fuels.
- ColdStream 1mo agoAlas, that kind of bravado doesn't go far. Also what if that complaint comes back in the form of a Nuke as they see it as an act of war? When things become existential, a lot of things that seems unlikely end up on the table as moral corruption sets in. "Either they go or we do!"
- pepperoni_pizza 1mo agoThen they get nuked back and they all die? Like how does that answer means anything?
- autoexec 1mo ago"nuke us and get nuked back" means we all die. Push people to the point where they're dying anyway and they might not see taking you out with them as a bad thing. You're a whole lot safer when the people around you can get enough food and water. We already have solutions that don't involve putting entire nations at risk of dying off in large numbers. The problem is that those solutions would eat into the already massive and growing profits of corporations who would sooner put your safety at risk than take even a small hit to their unsustainable growth.
- pfisch 1mo agoThey won't do that because it makes no sense. They will just complain about it and maybe refuse to trade or do some cyber attacks. No one would take this as an act of war just like no one takes cyber attacks as an act of war.
- fragmede 1mo agoOr course, if Elon Musk decides to do something about it, even if everyone else agrees thinks it's going to cause more problems due to 2nd order effects, what's gonna happen? He gets called a Nazi a couple more times?
- autoexec 1mo agoGeoengineering is just a gamble corporations want the world to take on their behalf. There's a chance that doing it would fuck things up way worse than they are now, but there's also a chance that it makes things a little better and if that happens it will reduce the pressure on those corporations to make the changes we already know with 100% certainty would improve things, but which would also directly eat into their profits. They're willing to risk screwing over the planet and/or large populations just to keep business as usual and profits sky high for a little longer when we all know that it was their irresponsible and clearly unsustainable practices that caused this mess in the first place and any success geoengineering might have would still only delay the inevitable changes to their business practices that need to be made. I don't blame people for not wanting to roll the dice just so that corporations can rape and pillage a little longer.
- pfisch 1mo agoWe are already geoengineering every single day. There is no version of this that has no risk. We can continue to do it aimlessly, or we can act with purpose.
- autoexec 1mo agoWe can act with purpose to reduce the amount of geoengineering we're doing every single day, and to reduce the harms we've caused in the process. More of the problem is not the solution. Especially not when purposeful geoengineering involves experimental tinkering with a system we don't really understand in the first place and can't replace if we get it wrong.