Playing God with the Planet: Engineering Our Way to Disaster
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Playing God with the Planet: Engineering Our Way to Disaster
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About this listen
This episode explores geo-engineering - humanity's most audacious attempt to technologically control Earth's climate systems. From injecting sulfur particles into the stratosphere to mimic massive volcanic eruptions, to the mind-boggling proposal of moving Earth's entire orbit, these planetary-scale interventions represent our species' ultimate expression of technological overconfidence.
The episode examines two main approaches: solar radiation management (essentially giving the planet sunglasses by reflecting sunlight) and carbon dioxide removal (directly pulling greenhouse gases from the atmosphere). Both require staggering industrial scales - equivalent to one Mount Pinatubo eruption every few years, or thousands of massive facilities removing billions of tons of CO2 annually.
We argue that instead of gambling on unproven planetary interventions that could lock us into permanent technological dependence, we should focus on distributed, democratic solutions that work with natural systems rather than attempting to dominate them.
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Episode 108 Webpage