Geoengineering: The Last Techno-Solutionist Jab Before the Great
Upheaval? ---- In the past, some agricultural communities had hailcannons operated by local farmers, who occasionally fired a few rockets
into the clouds, hoping to transform them into water. It was very noisy
and sometimes effective. ---- Since then, the climate disruption caused
by the Anthropo-Capitalocene has impacted the entire planet and human
activities, including agriculture. ---- The millionaire winemakers of
Bordeaux have therefore taken things to the next level. "The
Saint-Émilion region is at the forefront of geoengineering, a set of
techniques aimed at modifying the Earth's climate.» as if it hadn't
already been done...
How: by collectively releasing "salt-laden balloons... which seed the
clouds and prevent the formation of hailstones."(1)
Praise be to Holy Technology, which makes it possible to overcome
unpredictable weather and maintain the profits of luxury wine manufacturers.
These techniques, limited to a single territory, are unfortunately
peanuts compared to what's brewing in geoengineering labs and companies.
In our world, the more the global crisis worsens, the more humanity
feels trapped, the more existential the crisis becomes. "The climate's
sorcerer's apprentices"(2), technophile illusionists feel they have
wings (made of Kevlar or carbon fiber, of course). Engineers have
solutions as brilliant as they are disruptive, ranging from "injecting
aerosols into the stratosphere to installing giant mirrors in space" to
"reflect some of the sun's radiation back into space"(3) to cool the planet.
A carefully calibrated discourse is taking shape:
First, we'll change the name: geoengineering becomes "climate intervention."
It will be a "last resort option" (using fear to paralyze and gain
support) "in order to buy time" (to save ourselves, but also, time is
money) on the transition to carbon neutrality (which will not lower
temperatures immediately) with "more drastic and rapid solutions" (a
dose of techno-authoritarianism for humanitarian purposes)... All this
blah blah comes from an American association, Silverlining(4), which is
putting pressure on the scientific and political worlds in a sector that
is largely unregulated and therefore profitable. With the risk of
"unilateral deployments by certain states or private actors."
This is what the San Francisco region is considering to lower
temperatures on the Pacific coast, or Massachusetts to reduce carbon
concentration in the Gulf of Maine (east coast of the United States).
Some field experiments have taken place: in Australia, on the marine
clouds of the Great Barrier Reef, or in the USA, the unlawful launch by
the company Make Sunsets of balloons filled with sulfur dioxide into the
upper atmosphere. However, this solution is yet another deception:
First, as usual, it addresses the symptoms but not the causes (the
activity of the capitalist mega-machine) and once again favors a
religion that claims to be rational, techno-solutionism.
Second, it requires permanent interventions in the atmosphere (injection
of salts or sulfur, maintenance and replacement of mirrors) to maintain
the expected effects.
Third, it places us in the permanent clutches of self-proclaimed weather
makers.
Fourth, it definitively capitulates to the insidious privatization of
the atmosphere and space that is under way.
Fifth, our sorcerer's apprentices are incapable of understanding the
complexity of the functioning of the climate machine that governs the
planet. They ignore or pretend to ignore the systemic repercussions that
their interventions will inevitably cause. American researchers have
modeled the impact of the San Francisco project. "Result: due to the
decrease in cloud cover, the increase in temperatures[which will
continue due to the ongoing disruption]and the slowing of the famous
Gulf Stream[which our geoengineers are probably unaware of]... the
cooling of California would be "at best very limited... would lead to
thermal stress on a global scale generating a heat wave in Europe!"(5)
These projects and discourses combining existential fears, urgency,
salvation through technology, and the promise of a future identical to
the present, are strikingly similar to those that have been - and are
again being - held by nuclearocrats, extractivists, chip farmers, data
center growers, or small-time disaster chemists.
"Animal, we're in trouble...", an unintentional hit from May 1968
The animal world is often present in our lives through magazines, books,
and documentaries, which generally tend to represent it through certain
species-with a strong predominance of mammals-(felines, koalas,
elephants, dolphins, etc.), certain behaviors (predation, breeding,
games, etc.), while others (the ugly ones, the bad customers who are
difficult to film, the all-too-common ones like the fox or the hedgehog,
etc.) don't exist. In short, it's pretty standardized, with the added
implication that these species are both emblematic and representative of
the animal world.
Let's see what the situation is like in real life after a little
scientific ecology.
Biosphere: This is the set of living organisms and their habitats
(atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere). Biomass: This is the
totality of living organisms (animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, etc.)
present in the biosphere. Biomass is distributed between oceans and land
masses. It is measured in gigatons (billions) of carbon (GtC).
Scientists estimate (these are orders of magnitude) terrestrial biomass
at 550 GtC.(6) Plants account for 450 (80%), bacteria 70 (15%), fungi 12
(3%), and the animal world 2.6, or less than 0.5% of the total. So,
terrestrial animals don't weigh much in tons of carbon, but the best is
yet to come.
The researchers then studied how this terrestrial animal world is
distributed: the big winners are arthropods (basically insects and
spiders) (1.7 GtC), followed by annelids. Mammals are a distant second.
Among mammals, the (unique) human species has a biomass "ten times
greater than that of all wild mammals (5,500 known species)!"(7)
And this already enormous weight is further accentuated by that of
domestic animals: "cattle, sheep, and pigs represent a biomass 14 times
greater than that of wild mammals," or "60% of the mammal biomass."
Among them, cattle are overwhelmingly dominant. And among birds, it's no
better: "Domesticated species represent... 71% of the bird biomass."(8)
and here, chickens dominate.
In conclusion, with these figures, the emblematic and representative
animals should be milk-peeing cows and battery chickens, with a
permanent guest in the background: humans. Sure, it's less appealing
than a zebra, but more realistic because human activity, agriculture,
and industrialization (with the accompanying economic and ideological
systems) are responsible for this situation and we must take
responsibility. "Animal, we're in trouble..."
Rook and Eugene the Jeep
Notes
1 - Hail Warning. Le Canard Enchaîné. 06/26/2024
2 - See the book "The Sorcerer's Apprentices of Climate: Reasons and
Folly of Geoengineering" by Clive Hamilton, published by Seuil in... 2013!
3 - Geoengineering: Experts Fear a Slippage. Audrey Garric. Le Monde.
01/27/2025
4 - https://www.silverlining.ngo/
5 - Geoengineering: When will there be a sheriff to supervise these
sorcerer's apprentices? Fabrice Nicolino. Charlie Hebdo No. 1675. 08/28/2024
6 - Global distribution of biomass within the biosphere. Foundation for
Biodiversity Research. Summary of the article "The biomass distribution
on Earth. Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo (2018). PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115"
7 - Mammalian biomass is overwhelmingly composed of humans and their
livestock. Patrick Pla. Planet Vie. 03/29/2023
8 - Is it true that all livestock represent 93% of the total biomass?
Libération. Olivier Monod. 04/10/2019
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4406
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