Book. Faced with climate change, should we change the economic system or modify the Earth system? The effects are increasingly severe – scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that more than 3 billion people already live in threatened areas. And the decarbonization trajectories are not, for the moment, fast enough or ambitious enough.
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To deal with this, certain circles are beginning to defend the idea that humanity will need technology to modify the climate and the major planetary balances. The Great Reversal. How geoengineering is infiltrating climate policies (The links that liberate, 204 p., €20), the in-depth investigation by researcher Marine de Guglielmo Weber and Rémi Noyon, journalist at New Obsdelves into the twists and turns of these projects and the ideology that underpins them. It tells how a technological headlong rush gradually became a very real object of study, which is beginning to find a sympathetic response among certain political or economic leaders.
Sorcerer's Apprentices
The book explains how this idea, called “geoengineering”, evolved during the 20th century.e century, and how it is carried today by a handful of scientists and networks of billionaires from Silicon Valley. What do these projects consist of? The main one, very detailed in the book, aims to mask the Sun's radiation by diffusing a large quantity of sulfur particles into the stratosphere. The method claims to be inspired by the effects of large volcanic eruptions – that of Pinatubo (Philippines), in 1991, lowered the average temperature by 0.5°C the following year, temporarily limiting the effects of warming.
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However, this method also involves a series of major risks, which Marine by Guglielmo Weber and Rémi Noyon methodically identify. Threats to climate balance – since the effects are poorly known on precipitation, for example – but also to health, or even a significant drop in agricultural yields. Furthermore, this type of response could only be temporary and poses the risk of a « choc terminal » if the ballet of thousands of planes above our heads were to stop, since the temperatures would suddenly rise again.
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The book also addresses the geopolitical risks of such aims: “By whom and in what way could the solar veil be deployed? Who would have control of the thermostat? » But he does not simply list the projects on which a handful of scientists or techno-solutionist activists are working, from the management of solar radiation to the whitening of marine clouds. He also questions the merits of this thinking focused on technology and the total control of humans over the planet and its ecosystems. The authors emphasize that this logic testifies to a “forgetting the limits” and warn against the campaign led by a group of apprentice sorcerers to legitimize, in public debate, solutions never tested on a large scale, with the well-established risk of a cure worse than the disease.
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