Geoengineering: workshop and some recent posts

I’ve posted a bit about geoengineering before (here) and have mentioned Clive Hamilton’s new book Earthmasters here. Clive had an interesting post on his website recently about how geoengineering requires conceptualizing the earth as a whole and what Heidegger may have to say about that.

In response, Tim Morton tweeted that this geoengineering is “A desperate attempt to stop earth from jutting through world.”

And this got me thinking about how geoengineering is not a Plan B just in case global climate negotiations fail. Rather, geoengineering is more of Plan A – a way to keep us from challenging the basic ways of living that have led us to the (perceived) need for geoenginnering itself. As Tim points out, it keeps our understanding of the “world” safe by continuing to subdue the earth.

If you are interested, there is an upcoming workshop on geoengineering that will be streamed live on October 17th. Details below:

When

• Thursday, October 17, 2013
• 12-1:30 pm
• The event will also be streamed online at http://www.livestream.com/climatenexus.

Where

• Johns Hopkins Washington, DC Center
• 1717 Massachusetts Ave NW
• Room 204

Panelists

• Lee Lane, Visiting Scholar, Hudson Institute
• Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute, Washington, DC
• Simon Nicholson, Assistant Professor of International Relations, School of International Service, American University

About the Roundtable

Up until recently, climate change geoengineering, defined by the UK’s Royal Society as “the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change,” was viewed as outside the mainstream, or as Professor David Victor has put it less charitably, “a freak show in otherwise serious discussions of climate science and policy.” However, the feckless response of the global community to climate change ensures that temperatures are likely to rise to levels during this century that could have potentially catastrophic implications for human institutions and ecosystems. This had led to increasingly serious consideration of the potential role of geoengineering as a potential means to avert a “climate emergency,” such as rapid melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, or as a stopgap measure to buy time for effective emissions mitigation responses. This roundtable will examine the ethical, legal and political issues associated with climate change geoengineering research and development and potential deployment.

RSVP wburns@jhu.edu
Dr. Wil Burns, Associate Director
Master of Science, Energy Policy & Climate Program
Johns Hopkins University