UN: Caution, not climate tinkering

UN: Caution, not climate tinkering | rabble.ca
How will we address the multiple crises of climate, biodiversity, food, and water?

There are two profoundly different schools of thought. One is based on the belief that we should reduce resource exploitation and more fairly distribute resources. The other favors market-based approaches in conjunction with high-dollar technological fixes -- such as the deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate through geoengineering (proposed examples include seeding clouds with chemicals, obstructing solar rays with space-based mirrors, or using vertical ocean pipes to bring cooler deep-ocean water to the surface).

At the meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, on Oct. 30, those who favor the first approach scored a major victory. In a landmark consensus decision, the 193-member CBD closed its 10th biennial meeting in with a de facto moratorium on geoengineering projects and experiments.

"Any private or public experimentation or adventurism intended to manipulate the planetary thermostat will be in violation of this carefully crafted UN consensus," said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin American Director of ETC Group, who was in Nagoya lobbying for the moratorium.

"This is a victory for common sense, and for precaution. It will not inhibit legitimate scientific research."

The ETC Group -- the same civil society organization that successfully pushed for an international ban on Monsanto's infamous "terminator seed" a decade ago -- led the charge for the moratorium. The group's new report, Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering, offers a critique of this emerging set of planetary-scale technologies, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines as "the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment." David Keith, a leading proponent