I do buy the claim that public support for any sort of emission control will evaporate the moment geoengineering is realised as a tolerable alternative. Once the public believe, there will never be a quorum of voters willing to sacrifice anything of their own to reduce emissions.
I wonder if the possibility of geoengineering has already significantly reduced support for emission control, since the idea has been written about in popular science media for a while and isn’t exactly a state secret. Also, if we don’t put more effort into studying the actual cost and feasibility of geoengineering, it will be really disastrous if the cost turns out to be much higher than current expectations, or the idea turns out to be infeasible (without causing other serious side effects).
Yeah, I sometimes wonder if the sorts of people with the competence to get any real climate policy through also tend to have much more of an awareness of geoengineering than the general public, and that’s why we’re seeing so little productive energy. (Probably not though, afaict!)
Having more awareness then the general public is a very low bar. The general public doesn’t know about it at all.
I would be surprised if that’s the case. I remember talking with someone who did lobbying for the German energy sector. When I asked him about Thorium-Moltan-Salt reactors he didn’t know what I was talking about.
It seems to me that lobbyists generally aren’t the kind of people who are up to date with futuristic tech solutions. They are rather occupied with the technologies that the companies that they lobby for actually develop.
I wonder if the possibility of geoengineering has already significantly reduced support for emission control, since the idea has been written about in popular science media for a while and isn’t exactly a state secret. Also, if we don’t put more effort into studying the actual cost and feasibility of geoengineering, it will be really disastrous if the cost turns out to be much higher than current expectations, or the idea turns out to be infeasible (without causing other serious side effects).
Yeah, I sometimes wonder if the sorts of people with the competence to get any real climate policy through also tend to have much more of an awareness of geoengineering than the general public, and that’s why we’re seeing so little productive energy. (Probably not though, afaict!)
Having more awareness then the general public is a very low bar. The general public doesn’t know about it at all.
I would be surprised if that’s the case. I remember talking with someone who did lobbying for the German energy sector. When I asked him about Thorium-Moltan-Salt reactors he didn’t know what I was talking about.
It seems to me that lobbyists generally aren’t the kind of people who are up to date with futuristic tech solutions. They are rather occupied with the technologies that the companies that they lobby for actually develop.