Earth Equity News

Handle Exotic Climate Fixes with Care. By Cornelia Dean, NYTimes, August 11, 2008. "Last year, a private company proposed 'fertilizing' parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet. This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo... Similar questions are being raised about nanotechnology [and] robotics... There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies... Engineers, scientists, philosophers, ethicists and lawyers are taking up the issue in scholarly journals, online discussions and conferences... [but] so far... most… conversation... has been 'piecemeal'... [When the California-based concern called] Planktos announced [its iron fertilization plan in the] South Atlantic... in hopes of producing carbon-absorbing plankton blooms that the company could market as carbon offsets, countries bound by the London Convention… issued a 'statement of concern' about the work and a U.N. group called for a moratorium, but it is not clear what would have happened had Planktos not abandoned the effort for lack of money. When scientists and engineers discuss geoengineering, it is obvious they are talking about technologies with the potential to change the planet. But the issue of engineering ethics applies as well to technologies whose planet-altering potential may not emerge until it is too late."