| We're close to the tipping point for geoengineering. Elites don't want to stop global warming, they've spent billions of dollars trying to stop a response to global warming. Ordinary people say they want to do something about global warming but if it inconveniences them such as an increase in gas taxes, they will riot in the streets. (See the Yellow Shirts in France.) The conspicuous inability of governments to make elites feel a little pain (Macron and the wealth tax) means that governments have no legitimacy with which to demand sacrifices from anybody else. Thus you see "last straw" rebellions just about anywhere when there is an unpopular change, say a 4% increase in subway fares. With geoengineering you only need to scrape together a few billion a year which could be done by a small group of elites or governments (if Bloomberg didn't waste his time and money and reputation running for pres he could do it...) The best part of it is that a credible threat to Geoengineer might solve the collective action problem for other interventions: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0102-0 As for all the reasons why geoengineering is seen as a "cop-out" note that if it's really an extinction worth rebelling about, then we have to use "all means necessary" and that includes solar radiation management. |