We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Thinking the Unthinkable: Engineering Earth’s Climate

Click here to access article from Yale University's Environment360 website.
Jane C. S. Long, associate director-at-large of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is convinced that the only sensible way to combat climate change is to work toward “a zero-emission energy system as fast as possible.” But as chairwoman of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 18-member task force on geoengineering, the hydrologist and energy expert realized two fundamental things: that the world has still not come to its senses on global warming, and that science would be remiss if it didn’t consider the possibility that CO2 emissions will continue to soar for decades.
Because educational institutions are controlled by the One Percent, I suppose one ought to forgive US scientists for not understanding that the social-economic system which is dedicated to securing profits and power for the One Percent is the source of the problem, and needs to be changed. In any case, it appears that US scientists are left with dreaming up desperate fantasies for engineering the Earth's climate.  

Another explanation might be that they are too intimidated by threats coming from the One Percent to consider social-economic system change. See this piece entitled, "Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era'". Activists for the 99 Percent are very familiar with the extreme and often brutal methods that enforcers of the One Percent are willing to use to protect their system.