Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Geo-Engineering Jabber

Over at Chris Mooney's actually-read blog, the conversation over "geo-engineering" has continued on edifyingly. There are a number of perspectives getting registered, including, predictably enough, the futurological faithful and a climate-change denialist, but it isn't too mortifying. My partner Eric actually dropped in unexpectedly with my favorite comment of the lot.

One "Robert E" pithily offered this conversation-stopper: "I think of geongineering not as denialism, but as having a “Plan B” just in case “Plan A” doesn’t work."

To this, I chimed in:
My concern is that, first, people can't exactly explain the standards which govern inclusion in or exclusion from "Plan B" in a way that makes a lot of sense (calling into question, for me at least, the "Plan-likeness" of this "Plan") and that, second, the vast unpredictably complex endlessly maintained for-profit-or-for-pork mega-scale projects that happen to get included in "Plan B" in practice, as it were willy-nilly, by the culture of "Plan B enthusiasts" -- whether they can explain their inclusion in "Plan B" coherently or not -- look to benefit precisely the people who have profited from the extractive-industrial practices which caused so much of the problem at hand as well as the people whose denialism and misinformation about that problem has facilitated the failure of the advocacy of "Plan A" (which, it would appear, is, you know, "Environmentalism"), the very failure prompting, presumably, their oh-so-reluctant advocacy of these oh-so-profitable boondoggles in the first place. I welcome recommendations as to better phrases than "denialism" to describe these concerns. Faith-based futurological initiatives? The Plan that sold the world? The technofix is in? Bubble dome paradise for Me, moonscape for Thee? By all means, help a guy out.

The conversation continues on. Join in, there or here.

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