Climate restoration.
| Author | Symons, Jonathan |
Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration, Verso 2019
Until very recently, it was common for environmentalists to deride 'carbon dioxide removal' (CDR). CDR is a response to climate change that seeks to remove carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]) from the atmosphere. While 'natural' CDR methods that store carbon in forests, mangroves or soils are popular in the green movement, industrial methods of carbon removal are not. Green thinkers have commonly derided such 'techno-fixes' as a distraction from the real, transformational changes they advocate. Yet, the claim that CDR is an unwelcome distraction turns on an empirical question - do we still have time to avoid dangerous warming by conventional means?
Today, a new generation of activists are 'updating their priors' to reflect the worsening climate predicament. Greta Thunberg, at a 2019 UN Climate Meeting, captured the new mood when she lamented that staying below 1.5 degrees warming now relies 'on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist'. (1) Thunberg was right. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios that avoid dangerous warming now require 'carbon dioxide removal' on a scale rivalling existing rates of oil extraction. (2)
Activists who have popularised the ideas of 'climate emergency' and 'extinction' have jimmied the climate discourse's Overton window - perhaps opening up wider possibilities than they initially anticipated. Measures that were once seen as undesirable substitutes for ambitious mitigation, are increasingly viewed as necessary complements to other actions. Increasingly, NGO working papers and progressive party platforms are accepting the need for CDR. (3) However, the climate movement still needs to develop an analysis of negative emissions that aligns with its progressive values.
Holly Jean Buck's After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration may prove to be a turning point in this unfolding conversation. The book is invaluable reading for anyone involved in climate activism, or, for that matter, for anyone who is interested in how climate change will shape the future of social-democratic politics.
After Geoengineering sets out to unpick the 'binary' that opposes carbon removal to social transformation. Despite the title, the book is overwhelmingly focused on carbon dioxide removal, and only briefly considers the more controversial 'solar geoengineering' techniques that would seek to directly offset warming by reflecting the sun's energy into space. Its main focus is exploring how carbon removal could become a regenerative act. While readers may quibble with some specific details, there is no denying...
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