“Before we start geo-engineering, we have to raise the following question: are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onerous task of keeping the Earth in permanent homeostasis?
—James Lovelock

Up to now, this blog has focused on the bleak forecasts for the Earth’s climate and how those environmental tipping points will destabilize civilization. However a ray of hope still exists but it will require unprecedented, preemptive actions, global cooperation and much luck.

Sadly, the history of the world is not rich with precedents for this kind of crisis aversion. In the last great challenge civilization faced—that of World War II—the response to Nazi Germany came late and only when the threat was already quite obvious and millions of deaths unavoidable. Others might point to our avoidance of nuclear war, but many of those weapons not only still exist, but are proliferating around the world. So, the jury is still out on whether we were successful or not. In both cases, though, delay and political division allowed the threats to grow for too long. With climate change, delay means disaster. To overcome the impending upheavals of our climate and our civilization, the human race will have to collectively respond early, aggressively and consistently.

There is one precedent for a timely response to a global threat that many environmentalists point to as a model for how to respond to climate change: the global response to the threat to the ozone layer by CFCs. In that case, it took world leaders only two years from the time they formerly acknowledged the threat to signing the 1987 Montreal Protocol that successfully avoided disaster by forcing industry to find alternatives to CFCs. Today, the hole in the ozone layer from CFCs appears to be recovering, with the worst effects limited to the Southernmost region of the globe.

On the climate front, there has recently been some reason for optimism as well with the election of Barack Obama and his appointment of Nobel laureate Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Chu has called for a variety of aggressive measures to combat climate change–from focusing work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on developing technologies to fight global warming to painting rooftops and roads around the country white to increase the Earth’s albedo and save energy. This is a sea change for a nation formerly ruled by leaders whose only aggressive action on the matter was to censor the warnings of government scientists.

And yesterday, the House of Representatives at long last passed America’s first national attempt at curbing emissions: the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, also known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). The optimists in Congress hope this bill will keep global temperatures below the 2ºC threshold scientists consider the point of no return. However, during the give and take in Congress, the bill was so watered down that it may prove totally meaningless in the longer scheme of things. The Breakthrough Institute, a US environmental think tank, among others, sees this bill as so damaged by the political process that it will have little affect. They cite a Congressional Budget Office analysis that warns the bill will only reduce emissions by 2% between 2012 and 2020. This is in contrast to the 20% reduction by 2020 the IPCC regards as necessary to avoid catastrophe.

In the end, political resistence will hamper true reforms under the Obama Administration. And down the line, the world will continue to grow hot, dry and dangerous until the crisis is on top of us. In that desperate hour, the world will turn to its last option: a crash-course in geo-engineering the planet back to a cool state.

Two widely discussed ways to geo-engineer climate are carbon sequestration and increasing the Earth’s albedo. Sequestration is already employed indirectly by oil companies who inject CO2 into their wells to force oil out of the ground. Some coal companies are also proposing to inject CO2 into their mines, to offset, at least partially, the CO2 coal adds to the atmosphere. The good news is that the oil strategy already has a proven track record, but the option for coal is unproven and may not prove viable. Nevertheless, research by firms like Raytheon continue to look for leak-proof ways to seal CO2 underground. This is crucial, of course, for if the CO2 sequestered into the Earth every escapes, it would not only return itself to the atmosphere, but would also kill every person and animal immediately downwind from the leak.

Changing Earth’s albedo is another concept being explored. Albedo is the measure of reflectivity of a given surface, with highly reflective white being high in albedo and light-absorbing black being low in albedo. You are probably already aware of how hot blacktop is compared to concrete. The difference in temperature of these two surfaces is a function of how much light concrete reflects back to space and how much heat blacktop absorbs. As you might guess the most reflective substances in nature are ice and clouds. But sulfates also have a high albedo.

One emergency measure that could be employed would be to release thousand of tons of sulfates into the upper atmosphere from aircraft and high-altitude baloons to create a highly reflective haze that would cool the surface. This occurs naturally with volcanic explosions and is why after certain volcanic events, the Earth has experienced brief cold periods. The Krakatoa volcanic event of 1883, for example, caused global temperatures to drop 1.2ºC and is believed responsible for erratic weather for years afterward. Some estimate that by releasing between 2 and 10 megatons of sulfate into the atmosphere annually, we could counteract the worst of climate change. However, this technique has many dangerous side effects. Sulfates destroy ozone. In addition, such “global dimming” has been shown to lower the power of solar power cells and also to disrupt the Monsoons which billions of people rely on for their livelihoods (Wall Street Journal). Moreover, the effects are short lived and would need to be continued indefinitely.

Another way to increase Earth’s albedo is by creating clouds. One concept of doing so would use ships at sea that would somehow propel water vapor high into the atmosphere. But this has the potential of disrupting rainfall patterns and is so far only highly theoretical anyway.

It is encouraging that Secretary Chu wants to lead the Energy Department toward researching technological solutions to climate change. And, given enough funding, we may discover a miracle solution. One such miracle might come from bio-engineering organisms that trap CO2 in their bodies. Another theory proposed by scientist James Lovelock would speed up the churn of nutrients from the deep ocean to stimulate algal blooms that would suck up CO2 out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. But, Lovelock warns, this method, like all others, is untested and could cause more harm than good.

In short, the chances for inventing our way out of our predicament are not certain and highly problematic. Some have even warned that as the world grows desperate, “rogue” nations may take it upon themselves to use geo-engineering techniques to save themselves at the expense of others. For example, as food supplies are impacted in the United States later this century from droughts and heat, Americans may opt to seed the atmosphere with sulfates and generate clouds off its coasts, despite the terrible impact this might have for Africa. Or Russia may decide that the economic benefits of an ice-free Arctic may outway the risks and opt out of cooperation on fighting climate change.

Clearly, the geo-engineering method could get out of hand quickly as nations around the world begin tinkering with the climate to suit their local needs. Suddenly, a whole new international tension could arise out of climate change if the means to change climate moved from a byproduct of industrialization to an active program for national economic security. As James Lovelock has warned, geo-engineering is not as simple as we might think. Indeed, it may only worsen the problem.

The real solution to our climate crisis, then, is not to hope for technology to save us, but rather to act decisvely, without further delay. Some argue that the cap-and-trade system defined by the Waxman-Markey bill is really a prelude to more coherant treaties that will be drawn up in Copenhagen later this year between the Europeans, Americans and Chinese. This is hopefully true, for the current bill looks hauntingly similar to the kinds of overtures Europeans and Americans made to Adolf Hitler in the mid 1930s: meaningless acts of political expediency that only allow the problem to get much worse.