by Jeff Goodell
So yesterday was the official publication day for my new
book How to Cool the Planet, an event
that I’d like to mark by … taking a long nap.
I’m only a few days into the book tour, but I’m already exhausted.
Not that
I’m complaining. Being worn out by your
book tour is a nice problem for a writer to have. Part of my fatigue is the result of a bumpy redeye from LA to NYC the other
night; part of it can be blamed on a flood of questions from chemtrails conspiracy cultists who believe that Dark Forces are engaged in a secret plot
to reduce the population of the planet by poisoning millions of people with
aluminum particles dispersed in the sky. I’d like to have a sense of humor about this, but it’s hard enough to
have a serious discussion about geoengineering without having to fend off the
black helicopter crowd.
I’m not
bashing chemmies. I just want to talk about something more
interesting: money.
Not surprisingly, the question of
what role private capital might play in developing and deploying the hardware
to cool off the planet came up at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference in southern California
I attended earlier this week. After all,
geoengineering is the mother of all engineering projects. If we move forward with any of the various
technologies that are now being discussed (a very big if), there’s gonna be a
lot of cash flying around. An obvious
question: who will be the financial winners in a geoengineered world?
Here’s my top five:
Lobbyists:
Right now, because geoengineering is not much more than a twinkle in James Lovelock’s
eye, nobody on K street
is pushing for Department of Energy funding of stratospheric aerosol injection
devices. But in the future, they might
be. Geoengineering could turn out to be
the 21st century equivalent of industrial agriculture … or a
government project that has a lot in common with the overwrought, overfunded
Star Wars missile defense system. Either
way, lobbyists make out.
Carbon-sucking entrepreneurs:
Here’s a simple truth: anyone who figures out a cheap, simple way to
suck CO2 out of the air is going to make a lot of money. Not surprisingly, a number of scientists/entrepreneurs
are working on it, including David Keith, a physicist at the University of
Calgary. Keith’s company, called Carbon
Engineering, uses a simple chemical process borrowed from the pulp industry,
and has attracted $5 million in funding from investors, including Bill Gates. Right now, the cost of sucking carbon out of the
air is up around $150 a ton, but if Keith—or anyone else—can cut that cost
in half, things start to get interesting.
And when it comes to geoengineering, CO2 removal is the one area where
the profit motive is clearly lined up with the public good.
Early investors in albedo engineering companies: Manipulating the earth’s albedo (a
fancy word for reflectivity) by brightening clouds or injecting particles into
the stratosphere is the most dangerous and complex type of geoengineering
researchers are currently exploring.
Among the many questions: Who is going to end up doing the actual work
of brightening clouds or injecting aerosols? Maybe governments will be in charge, maybe a Richard Branson-like
billionaire. Either way, the hardware
is likely to be built by private contractors, just as the fighter planes used
by the U.S. Air Force are built by private concerns like Lockheed Martin—a
company with a market cap right now of about $32 billion.
Geoengineering conference organizers: The
whole idea of geoengineering is so fraught with technical, political, moral,
and cultural complexities that, no matter how the future of geoengineering
plays out, there are going to be plenty of issues to fret about. So we may as well gather up and fret
together, even if we have to pay for the privilege.
Fundamentalist preachers: I’m
not suggesting that religious leaders are motivated by money (or sex). However, if we start trying to deliberately
manipulate the earth’s climate, you can be sure that some will see this as
trespassing into forbidden realms, and they will raise their voices against
it. Imagine the war over abortion played
out in the stratosphere and you’ll have a pretty good idea where we might be
headed.
——-
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts from Jeff Goodell, author of How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate. Here’s his first and second posts. And here’s an interview with Goodell about his book, and an earlier interview about Big Coal.
Related Links:
What does coal mining have to do with geoengineering?
Can a book on geoengineering change the climate conversation?
Sole “Strategic Partner” of landmark geo-engineering conference is Australia’s “dirty coal” state of