ANOTHER ‘INCONVENIENT FACT’: HUMANITY WILL NEED RAPID LARGE-SCALE ENGINEERING TO ADDRESS HUMAN INDUCED CLIMATE DISRUPTION

Large scale engineering more likely than not be needed to address climate disruption and soon. Solar and wind cannot replace hydrocarbon-based energy because of huge international international power demand, low energy density and consequent large footprint, insufficient accessable rare elements, and clear lack of concerted international political will from the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Hydrocarbons will continue to serve as humanity’s fundamental energy base for the foreseeable future. Our future will necessarily include building out of transcontinental water transportation systems; engineered solutions to mitigate coastal flooding, modular nuclear energy, and ultimately, geoengineering the very atmosphere itself.

In the United States, moving water from the Great Lakes or Mississippi River to the southwestern states will become increasingly more attractive as drought threatens the economy and well-being of a quarter of our nation. Dikes and levees will be necessary along long segments of the southeastern coasts to control even tidal flooding of major urban centers. Critical food, grain to fish, will be genetically engineered to grow in evolving wet to dry climatic conditions.

Necessary ‘terra-forming’ our own earth to maintain equitable climatic and economic prosperity comes with a 'Faustian' bargain. We can palliatively address human induced climate disruption in the next 20 years, at least for wealthy nations, but not its fundamental cause unless carbon can be removed at enormous scales from the atmosphere itself. We can hope this too can be done, given technological advances in novel new energy sources in the remainder of the 21st century.