A Model of likely geoengineering solutions

NPR has recently reported on a story that raises old alarms: a group of native people called the Haida in Canada partnered with a businessman to dump iron dust in the ocean to 1) encourage fish populations who thrived on algae, and 2) absorb atmospheric carbon.  It’s difficult to blame the Haida, really, since their local livelihood depends so strongly on fish populations.

But geoengineering is a potentially dangerous idea.  While some social scientists, like David Victor and John Steinbruner argue that geoengineering is a potential necessity, given the fact of global warming, there are a variety of concerns that are likely to emerge: the first is that the science on the impacts of geoengineering, and likely models of future behavior is not there yet.  It is entirely possible that anthropogenic ‘solutions’ may exacerbate environmental degradation in unpredicted ways, if we start changing how ecosystems function.

The second is that, if states and business people adopt geoengineering as a plausible strategy, there is a danger that some actors may adopt unilateral geoengineering solutions which raises major political questions.  How are these kinds of activities to be coordinated?  What happens when (not if) states have different ideas about whether they would be served by geoengineering solutions?  Certainly, the ability of these technological ‘remedies’ to be controlled by the most globally powerful is a cause for alarm among the politically and economically marginalized, for whom this is not an option.