I’m not sure if immediacy of the problem really would lead to a better response: maybe it would lead to a shift from prevention to adaptation, from innovation to degrowth, and from international cooperation to ecofascism. Immediacy could clarify who will be the minority of winners from global warming, whereas distance makes it easier to say that we are all in this together.
At the very least, geoengineering does make the future more complicated, in that on top of the traditional combination of atmospheric uncertainties and emission uncertainties, we have to add uncertainty about how the geoengineering regime will proceed. And most humans don’t do a great job of responding to uncertain problems like this.
But I don’t think we understand these psychological and political dynamics very well. This all reminds me of public health researchers, pre-COVID, theorizing about the consequences of restricting international travel during a pandemic.
I’m not sure if immediacy of the problem really would lead to a better response: maybe it would lead to a shift from prevention to adaptation, from innovation to degrowth, and from international cooperation to ecofascism. Immediacy could clarify who will be the minority of winners from global warming, whereas distance makes it easier to say that we are all in this together.
At the very least, geoengineering does make the future more complicated, in that on top of the traditional combination of atmospheric uncertainties and emission uncertainties, we have to add uncertainty about how the geoengineering regime will proceed. And most humans don’t do a great job of responding to uncertain problems like this.
But I don’t think we understand these psychological and political dynamics very well. This all reminds me of public health researchers, pre-COVID, theorizing about the consequences of restricting international travel during a pandemic.
I’ll think a bit more on this.