by Ira Straus
Only one thing can plausibly
head off the growing dangers from global warming in the near-medium term. It is
not carbon reductions, but sunlight reflection, or what is technically called
"Solar Radiation Modification" (SRM).
Carbon and emissions
reductions are often described as the only answer. The proposals for them often
are quite extreme. Yet at the same time they are all inadequate for dealing
with the dangers of warning.
SRM is a less extreme
solution. And it has a good chance of actually working to get the problem under
control.
To be sure, carbon
reductions are needed as well as SRM for an enduring solution. But they can
help significantly only in the longer term; the warming would continue to
worsen for decades, even if we could somehow reduce emissions to zero. SRM is
essential for the short-medium term: it alone could reduce the global
temperature in real time.
Warming is perpetuated by policy planning obstruction
At the same time, there
has been a dangerous obstruction on the policy discussion and planning level. SRM
has not been sufficiently researched to know how to do it well and safely -- or
even to be entirely sure it can be
done well and safely.
The necessary research
has been long delayed, sometimes actively suppressed, by those who dislike it,
or fear it as a competition to their own preferred program. It is a bitter
situation: entrenched interests have often preferred to add to the damages to
the world from warming than to solve the problem, if solving it would mean
amending their belief systems and programs, and – what is sometimes even more
resented – potentially reducing the costs spent on those programs.
More and better research
and development on SRM is something that has come to be urgently needed. It is,
in fact, the only thing that could turn the program of carbon reductions into a
relevant and realistic solution for global warming, by supplementing its
long-term usefulness with means also for managing the near-medium term risks.
Can we break out of the
vicious circle in the warming debate?
Too much of our
discussion refuses to face this reality. It ends up in a deadly cycle of
symbiotic denials – and an escalating cycle of unrealism:
1. First, a “believers”
side shows, mostly accurately, a catastrophic climate danger.
2. It demands
increasingly costly measures against the danger, yet inherently insufficient
ones.
3. It avoids adding, and
usually avoids even mentioning, the only measures -- basically SRM -- that
could potentially enable us to prevent the catastrophe.
4. Instead it calls for
ratcheting up the old, inherently insufficient measures still higher; still
without getting even close to adequacy for managing the problem.
5. Others – the
“skeptics” -- reject this believers’ program as both extreme and irrelevant;
and often deny the danger itself. They often win politically, in face of the
costs and seeming inefficacy of the believers’ program.
6. The believers call
the skeptics “deniers” and blame them for the problem, without facing their
own, symbiotic denial of what is needed for policy realism and even for basic
adequacy for tackling the problem.
7. Reason is squeezed
out by the symbiotic blindnesses on both sides.
8. The feeling of
helplessness grows. Given the constriction of the debate to a framework that
rules out any solution, it makes sense to be left feeling helpless. It is the
only logical point in this cycle.
9. The cycle
repeats itself, but at a ratcheted-up level: in worsened conditions, with heightened
dangers, nearer dangers, more damages already endured, greater irrationalities
on both sides -- and the discussion focused on costlier yet still inherently
inadequate policies.
It is truly a vicious
circle. It ensures that the dangers from the warming will continue worsening.
We need to break out of it.
To get out of the cycle
of helplessness, we must enlarge the discussion and start talking about real
solutions, beginning with SRM.
Fortunately there are new sprouts shooting up for this larger discussion. A few of them are more
significantly placed in the public square than in the past. I
link one here, to which my own feeble efforts contributed. It shows that, no matter
what the seeming odds, the effort is worth making.
The bulk of the discussion
is still, to be sure, trapped in the vicious circle. But a growing part is not.
This is a reason for
hope. And a reason for proceeding with greater confidence in moving the larger discussion
forward.
