We can't agree on simple matters, but some are ready to bet the planet on untried and untested technology

Clive Hamilton, who questions
geoengineering, talks
talks with an audience member
after Thursday night's
Melbourne 'conversation'.

The world community cannot agree on relatively simple matters and yet many are arguing for planet-wide cooperation to introduce some form of geoengineering that will not succeed unless there is hitherto unseen international teamwork.

Further complicating the equation are the unknown and unintended consequences of ideas that can only be trialled on such massive scales that Earth could be tipped into a catastrophic change in climate paradigms beyond our control.

Geoengineering pundits argue climate change has reached such dire levels that to sit on our hands and do nought is worse than foolhardy, it’s simply irresponsible and denies our humanity.

Many are not arguing for a “sit on our hands” approach, rather they are saying we should switch immediately (and that is today!) to renewable energy and equally quickly change our consumptive behaviours to reduce fossil fuel energy needs to zero and slow, seriously our extraction from the earth of various resources.

It was just on Thursday night that Australian author and a Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne, Clive Hamilton, noted that those corporations which had long denied climate change could see profits for them in geoengineering and where putting forward proposals for such an idea.

Geoengineering pundits stand with the “builders”, those who like to do something that they see as practical while those with differing opinions are more interesting in fine-tuning, finessing what exists, making it work more efficiently, more sustainably, and as was the case in those times of depression, making do with less.

Paul Beckwith, in saying “Why WE MUST a) cool the Arctic, b) lower CO2 levels” argues we have run out of time on climate change.

“All heck is breaking badly. We must zero fossil fuel emissions, but this is not enough to restore climate stability.”

In this YouTube clip, he says: “I discuss why and how we will cool the Arctic, and why and how we will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or oceans. There is no other option. If you are against this then do not understand how severe abrupt climate change is, and what it will cost us.”