The Future (62 page)

Barring breakthroughs, however, the cost of the CCS technology presently available—both in money and energy—is so high that utilities and others are unlikely to use it. A utility operating a coal-fired generating plant and selling electricity to its customers would have to divert approximately 35 percent of all the electricity it produces just to provide power for the capture, compression, and
storage of the CO
₂
that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. While that might be interpreted as a bargain if it saved civilization’s future, the utility could not afford to do it and still stay in business. And the volumes of CO
₂
emissions involved are so enormous that taxpayers do not have much appetite for shouldering the expense.

While safe and secure underground storage areas do exist, the process of locating them and then painstakingly investigating their characteristics in order to ensure that the CO
₂
will not leak to the surface and into the air is quite significant. There has been notable public opposition to the siting of such underground storage facilities near populated areas. The consensus among those scientists and engineers who are experts in this subject is that the longer the CO
₂
is stored, the safer it becomes—
because it begins to be absorbed into the geological formation itself. Nevertheless, the overall expense of CCS has prevented its adoption by large carbon polluters.

Both the United States and China announced large government-financed demonstration projects for CCS, though the Chinese project—known as GreenGen—is behind schedule, and the U.S. project—called FutureGen—is mired in the endemic
political paralysis that characterizes the present state of democracy in the United States.
Norway, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia are among the other countries pursuing CCS. However, one of the world’s leading experts on CCS, Howard Herzog of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has said for years that the real key to making this technology profitable and viable
is to put a price on carbon.

The second technology that is sometimes described as a silver bullet that could eliminate most CO
₂
emissions, at least from the electricity-generating sector, is one with a long and fraught history—nuclear power.
The present generation of 800 to 1,200 megawatt pressurized light water reactors is, unfortunately, probably a technological dead end. For a variety of reasons, the cost of reactors has been increasing significantly and steadily for decades. In the aftermath of the triple tragedy in Fukushima, Japan, the prospects for nuclear energy have further declined.

The safety record, while much improved, is still one that has been producing public opposition. France, which used to have a global reputation as the most advanced and efficient nation in nuclear power,
has had difficulties with its new generation of reactors. South Korea, on the other hand, has been moving forward
with a design that many experts believe is promising. Several new reactors are under construction around the world, but as our low-carbon energy options are evaluated, nuclear energy is severely hampered by both cost and perceived safety issues. There is still a distinct possibility that the research and development of a new generation of
smaller and hopefully safer reactors may yet play a significant role in the world’s energy future. We should know by 2030.

In spite of their problems, both CCS and nuclear power have had enduring appeal, partly because they are technological solutions that offer the possibility that a single strategy might lead to a relatively quick fix. Indeed, psychologists tell us that one of the other glitches in our common way of thinking about big problems is what they call “single-action bias,” a deeply
ingrained preference for single solutions to problems, however complex the problems may be.

This same common flaw in our way of thinking helps to explain the otherwise inexplicable support for a number of completely bizarre proposals that are collectively known as geoengineering. Some engineers and scientists argued several years ago that we should float billions of
tiny strips of tinfoil in orbit around the Earth to reflect more incoming sunlight and thereby cool down the global temperature. The public record does not indicate whether they were wearing tinfoil hats when they launched their idea. An earlier proposal in the same vein featured a
giant space parasol, also intended to block incoming sunlight. It would have had to be 1,000 miles in diameter and would have required a moon base for its construction and launch. Others have suggested that we attempt to accomplish the same result by injecting
massive quantities of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere in order to block sunlight.

The fact that any reputable scientist would lend his or her name to such proposals is certainly a measure of the desperation that those
who understand the climate crisis feel about the abject failure of the world’s political leadership to begin reducing the rate of emissions of global warming pollution. But given the unanticipated consequences of the planetary experiment we already have under way—pumping 90 million tons of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere every twenty-four hours—it would, in my opinion, be utterly insane to launch a second planetary experiment in the faint hope that it might temporarily cancel out some of the consequences of the first experiment without doing even more harm in the process.

Among the other consequences of the SO
₂
proposal that was pointed out in a 2012 scientific study is this startling change: the sky we have gazed at since the beginning of humankind’s
existence on Earth would no longer be blue—or at least no longer be
as
blue. Does that matter? Perhaps we could explain to our grandchildren why there were so many references to “blue skies” in the history of the cultures on Earth. Maybe they would understand that it was necessary to sacrifice the blueness of the sky in order to accommodate the political agenda of oil, coal, and gas companies. The levels of pollution above cities have already changed the
color of the night sky from black to reddish black.

No one has any idea what such proposals would mean for the photosynthesis of food crops and other plants; light needed for life would be partially blocked in order to create more “thermal space” to be occupied by steadily increasing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The effectiveness of photovoltaic conversion of sunlight into electricity—one of the most promising renewable energy technologies—might also be damaged. And none of these exotic proposals would do anything whatsoever to halt the acidification of the oceans.

In addition, if we failed to reduce CO
₂
emissions, the sulfur dioxide injections or orbiting tinfoil strips would have to be increased steadily, year by year. Nor does anyone have the faintest idea of what these wack-adoodle proposals would do to climate patterns, precipitation, storm tracks, and all of the other phenomena that are already being disrupted. Have we gone stark raving mad?

No, we haven’t gone mad. It’s just that our way of communicating about global challenges and debating reasonable solutions has been subjected to an unhealthy degree of distortion and control by wealthy corporate interests who are themselves desperate to prevent serious consideration of reducing global warming pollution.

Technically, there are a range of
benign
geoengineering proposals that may well offer marginal benefits without imposing reckless risks. Painting roofs white, for example, or planting millions of roof gardens are both examples of riskless changes to the reflective characteristics of the Earth’s surface that could bounce more of the incoming sunlight back into space before the heat energy it carries is absorbed in the lower atmosphere. In a variation on this theme, Peru is painting rocks white high in the Andes in a desperate effort to slow the
melting of glaciers and snowpacks on which they rely for drinking water and irrigation.

If we continue to delay the launching of a serious multipronged global effort to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution, we will find ourselves pushed toward increasingly desperate measures to mitigate the growing impacts of global warming. We will try to muddle through, argue and fight with one another, pursue our self-interest at the expense of others, often deceiving them and ourselves in the process. That is the course that we are on now.

But when the survival of what we hold most dear is clearly at risk, then we must act. In all of human history, there have been rare moments when we have risen to transcend our past and charted a new course to safeguard our deepest values. At one such challenging moment in history, Abraham Lincoln said, “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

This time, our world is at stake. Not the planet itself; it would, of course, survive nicely without human civilization, albeit in an altered state. Rather, what is at stake is the set of environmental conditions and the health of the natural systems on which our civilization depends. And the fact that this crisis is global in nature is part of the unique challenge we face.

Only twice before in all of human history has the future of our entire global civilization been at risk. Once, at the dawn of
Homo sapiens
’ time on Earth 100,000 years ago, anthropologists tell us
that our numbers were reduced to less than 10,000 people, yet somehow we prevailed. The second occasion was when the United States and the former Soviet Union came all too close to unleashing massive nuclear arsenals against one another, killing hundreds of millions and risking a nuclear winter with potentially apocalyptic consequences. And again, somehow we prevailed.

This time, the threat to our future is one that would not arrive in a
matter of minutes with bright flashes and deafening sounds. It would be drawn out, and generations yet to come would live all their lives with the painful knowledge that once upon a time the Earth was hospitable to humans. It sustained and nourished us with cool breezes and abundant food and water. It inspired and renewed us with its majestic beauty.

When memories of that Earth faded, the story would still be told: in the early decades of the twenty-first century, a generation gifted by those that came before them with the greatest prosperity and most advanced technologies the Earth had ever known broke faith with the future. They thought of themselves and enjoyed the bounty they had received, but cared not for what came after them. Would they forgive us? Or would they curse us with the dying breaths of each generation to come?

If, on the other hand, we do find a way to rise to this occasion, we will have the rare privilege of meeting and overcoming a challenge that is worthy of the best in us. We have the tools we need. Some of them, it is true, need repair. Others need to be improved and perfected for the task ahead. All that we lack is the will to prevail, but political will can be renewed and strengthened by acknowledging the truth of our circumstances and accepting our obligation to safeguard the future for the next generation and all who will follow them.

What we most need is a shift in our way of thinking and a rejection of the toxic illusions that have been so assiduously promoted and continually reinforced by opponents of actions, principally large carbon polluters and their allies. In some ways, this struggle to save the future will be played out in a contest between Earth Inc. and the Global Mind. The interconnection of people all over the world by means of the Internet has created the potential for an unprecedented global effort to communicate clearly among ourselves about the challenge that now confronts us and the solutions that are now available.

On the other hand, the increasing interconnections among businesses and industries all over the world has generated powerful commercial momentum that is highly resistant to any effort by governments to rein in its more destructive tendencies. Earth Inc. is now the dominant source of influence over governments. Fortunately, there are a great many examples of the emergence of a global conscience on the Internet that has exerted powerful pressure to correct injustices and moral failures such as child labor, abusive working conditions, false imprisonment,
sex slavery, persecution of vulnerable minorities, and destruction of the environment, among other causes.

In some countries, this new emergent capacity for the development of a collective global conscience has also contributed greatly to policies aimed at solving the climate crisis. The number of grassroots, Internet-based NGOs devoted to safeguarding the ecological system of the Earth has been growing. The remaining question that is crucial to our future is whether the requisite force of truth necessary to bring about a shift in consciousness powerful enough to change the current course of civilization will emerge in time.

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