Astronomer royal calls for 'Plan B' to prevent runaway climate change

[Peace Patriot]

19. I'm afraid he's right--geoengineering is the only thing that will save us.

We need to expand our awesome (but heretofore fatal) cleverness, as a species, to how to fix what we've done to the planet.

There is simply NO WAY that we can rein in the population explosion and mega-greed that are driving global warming. It quite obviously cannot be done.

As to the latter--the mega-greed--the forces of greed have defeated our once viable democracy AND are at work in China as well--THE two greatest polluters of the planet. Without democratic control in either place, the pollution will continue unchecked.

Methods of population control are also not working. We are going backwards on population control here--with attacks on women's health clinics and the whole fascist agenda of turning women back into baby machines. And China's solution--limiting births by law--is too draconian, and is not sufficient anyway to solve the planetary problem: too many people, and all of them wanting cars, 24 hour lighting, air conditioning, heaters, power tools, year round fruits and vegetables flown in by jets from faraway places, the latest fashions tankered over the oceans, cow foods (cows very polluting of the atmosphere), and all manner of polluting products, from toilet paper (many a carbon-sequestering forest felled just for that alone) to computers (far more polluting than we realize) and on and on.

The few people being made uber-rich by supplying all of these products WILL NOT PERMIT any curtailment of their activities. "We the People" OBVIOUSLY have no power to override them.

The planet is going down. There is no question about it. A couple of years ago, the World Wildlife Fund stated that we have 50 years--at current levels of pollution and deforestation-- to the death of the planet. 50 years! To the DEATH of the planet! And we've made little or no progress on curtailing any of these planet-killing activities since then, and have no prospects for any progress in the near future, due to corporate control of our government, here, and out-of-control greed here and elsewhere.

I HOPE that there is a technical solution! The only thing I have faith in now IS our quite amazing technical ability. It has gotten us into the most terrible trouble, but I think that it is the only way out of it, at this point. I am an environmentalist. I spent ten years of my life trying to prevent the destruction of just one small part of earth's forest system--and failed. And the reason I and those whom I worked with failed is that the deforesting corporations are just too powerful. THEY control our allegedly elected officials, our laws, our government agencies, the media, the science and business departments of our universities, the courts and everything else. They destroy and pollute at will and there is no stopping them.

Or, at least, there is no stopping them IN TIME to save earth's ecosystem. We may well have a democracy revolution here but that is going to take time. The same for the other biggest polluter, China. There ISN'T time. That is the problem.

There are also new environmental movements that are possible--big changes of habits by many people--and a lot of local/individual actions that are being taken--from the local, organic food revolution to cities "going green"--but again, time is a factor as to the spread of such movements and actions.

I have thought about this long and hard. I agree with the royal astronomer. We need to get clever-er because we are clearly NOT going to get sustainable any time soon.

We have some further threats to life on earth that compound the problem of climate change--for instance, this on-going nuclear disaster in Japan, which now threatens all life in the Pacific Ocean. No solution in sight--and it is NEVER MENTIONED in our (corporate media controlled) political discussions or by our government!

That is flabbergasting. But, given the same phenomenon on climate change--SILENCE, while the life of the planet quickly ebbs away--it is really not all that surprising.

This is what we are facing--silence and collusion by all the powers-that-be.

I think that's why this British astronomer talks about "Plan B." Plan A, that the governments of the world would mandate and enforce reversal of carbon emissions, is "off the table." Plan A HAS to include the U.S. and China, and both governments are owned by the polluters. End of Plan A.

So, geoengineering is it.

One other thing we should think about is terraforming. Given the ballooning human population of earth, the vast levels of current pollution, the certainty of yet MORE pollution, the impossibility of a political solution (electing anybody who would change this), and the inevitable slowness of local action and large-scale movements, we need to start "greening" ANOTHER planet, as well as re-greening this one, artificially. Human life on earth has become UNSUSTAINABLE. EVEN IF we are able to stop global warming with a technical solution, we will still not have solved the problem of population growth and the product needs and desires of expanding humanity.

Further, it is very likely, if certain developments in the medical science field continue, that human life will keep getting longer and humans may end up becoming very long-lived if not immortal. Barring nuclear meltdown, nuclear war, social implosion and breakdown of civilized life, or other kinds of disasters--including the already in-progress disasters of global warming (which could well produce chaos and shorten life-spans)--it won't be long before genetic engineering, artificial body parts for all parts of the body (even perhaps the brain!) (brain cells have now been grown in "dishes"--cells that start making electrical and chemical connections with each other) and other advances for the extension of life become commonly available. We don't have the room, on earth. We really don't. If we are going to continue in this way--making ever more human beings, and extending the lifespans of humans, and if all of these humans are going to have modern conveniences--we MUST find more room, in addition to restoring THIS planetary environment.

The Moon and Mars both have water. We need to figure out how to make them have trees and grasses and an atmosphere.

It's rather an artificial mental construct to dub geoengineering and terraforming as unnatural, when those solutions rely on Nature to complete themselves. Reflectors, for instance, used to fend off some of the sun's rays, would have the intent, at least, to create better conditions behind and under the reflectors for Nature to flourish--for ice to form, for polar bears to have a habitat, for ocean temperatures to decrease, helping both fish and whales and humans in coastal flood zones, and so on. And terraforming does something similar--creates the conditions for life to exist. After certain actions are taken, to start things off, Nature then has to do the rest--and Nature is exceedingly creative at filling every niche with life.

Also, geoengineering for our immediate problem--the over-warming of earth--may buy us time to address the larger problems of fossil fuels, greed, lack of democracy and overpopulation.

So I say to the corporate entities who have destroyed our democracy and despoiled our very home, earth, go for it! Do your best! If you can create a refrigerator--so clever!--you can create polar ice caps. If you can create the iPhone, certainly you can turn CO2 into oxygen. If you can grow living human brain cells in dishes, certainly you can re-populate the earth with bees and birds and other critters and fill it again with trees. If you can build a nuclear bomb, certainly you can deal with the sun's rays. If you can invent the Ziplock bag, certainly you can zip the planet back into a viable place to live and get the Mars and Moon projects started to improve our options. You might even redeem yourselves so that we don't have to ban you from the solar system.