We need social solutions to climate change, not engineered mechanical-like ideas

-      Robert McLean

Even willingly discussing climate engineering is among the worst of human failures.

That, of course, needs to be put in context for people have been “engineering” the climate ever since they appeared and so to modify our behaviour we need to discuss what it is we do.

However, for millennia we were unaware of the consequences of what we were doing, but now we understand the damage we are causing and it appears, sadly, we have no intention of modifying our behaviour to mitigate the cause of the damage, rather we are going to use our “big brains” to engineer our way out of this quickly evolving difficulty.

Instead of looking toward an engineered solution that has potential unintended consequences of which we have little or no understanding, we should study and apply those changes we do understand and whose outcomes are about all forms of life, including humankind.

Climate change will be eventually resolved, or eased, or mitigated, through social solutions, an agreement among the world community that any truly workable solution must be people orientated and not an engineered solution that is detached and remote from what people really need.

Read the “Briefing Paper on Climate Engineering” by Janos Pasztor from Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and Simon Nicholson and David  Morrow from the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment.