The Carbon Dioxide Dilemma Promising Technologies and Policies (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 1-14
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Introduction
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The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than selfdeception and blindness in relation to the historical moment. -Martin Heidegger At this point in the evolution of our species, we appear to be deeply afflicted with a failure of perception precisely as Heidegger described it, and the lack of vision that results makes us increasingly dysfunctional and even dangerous.
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Given the scale of human technological and economic systems and human demographic patterns, this trend will intensify in the future unless there is a catastrophic collapse of the species. Approaching the current global climate-change negotiating process, which I will call the Kyoto process for short, with this perspective, it is apparent that the real question is not simply how to withdraw the human presence from the globe, by presuming, for example, to reduce all carbon emissions to preindustrial levels.
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A major feature of the anthropogenic Earth, however, is the commoditization of vast swathes of natural cycles, beginning with agriculture, and now accelerating into genetic engineering, carbon cycle management, and the like. Humans inherently change natural systems by importing into them the dynamics of human systems; indeed, this is a principle effect of cultural and technological evolution.
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Cleaning up a hazardous waste site, for example, or implementing regulations regarding clean air and water does not take long enough for cultural constructs to change during the process. But if we are talking about establishing future evolutionary paths for the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, or the climate cycle, we can predict with certainty that all of our current cultural concepts will change during the relevant time period.
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But if we are discussing how to reconfigure the potential pathways for human economic development for the next 300 years or the energy technologies that will be available for development in Asia, Latin America, or Africa, which is what the Kyoto process implicitly involves, we need a very different kind of discussion. Environmental issues that have enormous cultural and economic implications require a discussion that goes beyond environmentalist discourse and a much more transparent process.
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These critics cite as proof European insistence that the United States should not be allowed to use purchased carbon credits or other mechanisms to meet its treaty requirements in full but be required to reduce substantially its own emissions. Obviously, the carbon cycle does not "care" where emissions reductions, if that is the chosen measure, occur.
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The Kyoto process may or may not continue without the participation of the United States, but complex systems and the integrated human/climate system is arguably complex beyond our current understanding do evolve, and they do so in ways that are difficult to predict. Moreover, once the ideological blinders have been removed, a number of potential mitigating technologies from active carbon sequestration at fossil fuel plants to carbon sequestration through ocean fertilization with iron to industrial-scale scrubbing of the ambient atmosphere to geoengineering options can be explored.
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Batten Institute Working Paper. Charlottesville, Va.: Batten Institute, Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia.
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If we assume the greenhouse problem will become serious when the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the preindustrial concentration, it will happen sometime in the second half of this century, if current trends continue.
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Today, in Alberta, Canada, and elsewhere, CO2 and hydrogen sulfide are routinely removed together from natural gas and co-stored below ground. Could that practice be extended and generalized?
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As best I can tell, the process involves absurdly detailed modeling intended to prove that nothing serious will happen below ground after injection, followed by little, if any, postinjection monitoring and verification of what is actually happening below ground. The program to store nuclear waste began with great hubris; the public was promised leak-proof, very long-term storage.
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As environmental technology, it is directed toward minimizing the impact of human activity on the biosphere. As survival technology, it is directed toward maximizing human welfare.
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