A modest proposal for unlimited power
The Climate Change and the political future of Earth's residents
Here is a scenario I’ve been contemplating lately.
First, two assumptions:
1. Companies possessing fossil fuel reserves would prefer to extract and profit from them indefinitely.
2. Global warming will soon reach a point where the pressure to respond quickly to the problem will be impossible to resist.
Solar geo-engineering – basically humans messing around with the Earth’s climate controls – is understood by some to be fast way to cool down the Earth. I’m not saying it’s good environmental policy. The potential for catastrophic results is large. And yet, given the first two assumptions, the probability that geo-engineering will be proposed – and implemented – in the near future has increased in the last week with the election of Donald Trump.
Trump received $14 million in from oil and gas companies, cash that helped him win the presidency. He has always been sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry, and this election has done nothing to change that.
To add some details to the scenario I contemplate:
A 2018 study by Harvard scientists estimated that a program of solar geo-engineering would cost about $2.25 billion a year over a 15-year period. I think Elon Musk pays this to his valet. It’s chump change for our billionaires nowadays.
The scenario I contemplate is that the solar geo-engineering is not conducted by governments. Governments won’t do this, for one thing because there’s too much disagreement about the policy. The solar geo-engineering is done by billionaire “philanthropists” who are eager to demonstrate their generosity – perhaps in exchange for considerable (unlimited?) political power.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
One of the problems with solar geo-engineering is that by putting this reflecting layer around the Earth’s atmosphere, the pressure to actually restrict CO2 emissions diminishes. So, the reflecting layer goes up, and the CO2 layer continues to grow. This means that if the solar geo-engineering program stops, the problem is not the same as when the program started. It’s much, much, much worse.
So, imagine an Earth where we depend on a billionaire or a group of billionaires to ensure that we do not face life-extinguishing temperatures of 150°F at ground level. Horrible? Yes. Unthinkable? No.
