Category: science fraud

Geoengineering Update

Well, we are having some of the best weather we’ve had in ages. As much as I’m enjoying it, I know the Geoengineering/Weather Modification/Weather Warfare wages on worldwide.

So, the updates.

The United Nations wants to regulate Geoengineering, suddenly, as they continue to pretend it hasn’t been going on for decades.

According to one new report:

“Up to 40% of Americans believe this theory to be ‘‘some- what true’’, which has influenced social attitudes about climate policy, and geoengineering.(25)
On climate change, there is growing evidence of a ‘‘spillover’’ effect that leverages local conflict/contro- versies to cascade controversies in order to shift a policy agenda deliberately(28–30), similar to conventional agenda-setting. In this paper, we expand on the conceptual application of the ‘‘spillover effect’’ to evaluate conspiracy theories across geopolitical boundaries and their agenda-setting impact on public emotions and online toxicity perceptions of SG research.
This paper is distinct from previous studies critiquing SG governance challenges and their associated controversies related to climate action, on which there is already a rich literature,(3,4,6,7,16,25,31–33) including social media mining-based SG conspiracy analysis.25 One apparent gap in Tingley and Wagner’s (25) study is that the authors had a narrow focus on the ‘‘chemtrails’’ conspiracy theory in their searches for data collection. Therefore, they could not measure any spillover effect from other conspiracy theories in geoengineering debates.
This study uses digital data from social media to capture cross-sectional variation in public emotions.”

What is the concern of this study? Hate speech on Twitter concerning Chemtrails conspiracy theory. Lots of “fucks” are being given, quite literally.

I’m so glad to hear that, I didn’t realize how many actually know and care! In combination with the spectacular weather here, I’m feeling downright hopeful.

INTRODUCTION
“As the calls for climate action intensify, (1,2) climate engineering technologies, in particular solar radiation management (SRM), have received increasing attention, and public controversy has ensued. SRM includes technologies such as space-based shields, stratospheric aerosols, cirrus cloud thinning, marine cloud brightening, and increasing surface albedo.3–5 While the broader conception of geoengineering may also include greenhouse gas removal options (such as large-scale afforestation or direct air capture and storage), most geoengineering debates focus on ‘‘solar geoengineering (SG)’’, often referred to as solar radiation management or solar radiation modification (SRM).”

https://www.cell.com/iscience/pdf/S2589-0042(23)00243-2.pdf

I was also happy to see Corbet Report continuing some coverage on the topic in their latest New World Next Week program, instead of following suit of the vast majority of ‘alt’ media in talking about one chemical spill rather than the incessant chemical dispersions in our skies on a regular basis.

From their Show Notes:

Story #1: Solar Geoengineering Should Be Regulated, U.N. Report Says
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-geoengineering-should-be-regulated-u-n-report-says/
An Open Letter Regarding Research On Reflecting Sunlight to Reduce the Risks of Climate Change
https://climate-intervention-research-letter.org/
PDF: “One Atmosphere: An Independent Expert Review on Solar Radiation Modification Research and Deployment”
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/41903/one_atmosphere.pdf
The Magic Words – #SolutionsWatch
https://www.corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-magicwords/
Mexico Becomes First Nation to Admit Harms of Geoengineering, Halts Future Experiments
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/mexico-bans-geoengineering/
Geoengineering Startup’s Claim It Got ‘OKs to Launch’ From FAA Doesn’t Stand Up to Scrutiny
https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/24/23613293/solar-geoengineering-mexico-us-reno-nevada-faa-make-sunsets
UN Says Censoring “Disinformation” and “Hate Speech” Will Protect “Free Speech”
https://reclaimthenet.org/un-says-that-censoring-disinformation-will-protect-free-speech

Well worth a listen, the Geoengineering segment is first:

Institutional Capture & Socio-Cultural Re-Programming

Just another few pieces of evidence to add to the already vast mountain range of nonsense we are expected to swallow on a daily basis.

3 short-bits follow, plus a bonus. Each is ignoring, or side-stepping the most contentious and necessary topics while exploiting the low-hanging fruit, that of course being the most fruitful recipe of our times.

  1. The Geoengineering question, bypassed in the typical trifecta fashion: Avoid, Smear, Redirect. If that doesn’t work, pretend it’s new and revolutionary. Or, pretend it’s old and therefor safe and reasonable. If all else fails, feign ignorance. Not necessarily in that order.

    Here our host lets him get away with it, so typical! (For shame, he instantly dropped in my initial estimation by multiple degrees.) So, in their non-summation Geoengineering is all about Bill Gates covering up the sun, and certainly not about a century of global military industrial complex scheming.

    Furthermore, it’s right up there in the Crazy Zone with the Virus-Deniers and Flat Earth theory!

    This ‘rabbit hole’ is so old to me now, all that’s left of deep inquiry here is the pondering: Do they really buy their own bullshit? (34:33 minute mark for the Geoengineering ‘question’). This is what’s posing as ‘alternative journalism’ these days. Effective ‘ambush journalism’ has been inverted into staged theater, then morphed into public relations. Not a single toe-to-toe to be expected. It’s like listening to a well-choreographed two-step. I’d prefer watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, at least they occasionally ventured into new territory, still choreographed of course, but for the sake of their well-seasoned audience, a welcome escape from the repetition. Professor Steven Starr on Geopolitics and Empire: We Are Already in WWIII

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/geopolitics-empire/id1003465597?i=1000598968822

2. Next we have a Geoengineering documentary, supposedly out in 2008 (that I somehow never heard of? Seems unlikely.) Full of goose-stepping oddness and fear-mongering, narrated by a digital voice, then the famous Alan Watt, and various other voice-overs.

Here is the oddest sentence of the entire 4-hour All-Over-The-Place Everything-Soup Concoction: 03:40:53 “HG Wells talked about the new freemasonry of the air. Policing the skies.” Wait, Whaa?!

And seriously, a 4-hour documentary, who watches those?
Exactly.

Don’t Talk About the Weather (2008)

3. And, never fear, the institutions will continue doing their institutionalizing!

Science™ brought to you by . . .

The modern day worshipping of the imperialist, industrialist and technocrat alike. It’s the current New World Religion.

And, yippie, Arizona State University, my Alma Mater, continues to lead the way, now color me proud! (Don’t miss the sarcasm dripping in computer-augmented Magenta at this point!)

According to their provost and Executive Vice President, Nancy Gonzales of Miami, Arizona, rural folk should not be scorned or pitied, because they can still blossom from their abject poverty working in the mines in order to serve the Corporate State at ever higher levels. So won’t their kinfolk be proud!

“Although many people focus on the disadvantages of a rural upbringing, we didn’t see it that way. Miami was a place where parents sacrificed and families supported one another to lift up the next generation.”

According to their propaganda that well-educated, well-meaning next generation is going to solve all the global desert metropolises’ water worries with more awesome tech solutions.

Confoolery at its finest! Keep climbing that ladder kids!

For our bonus, here’s a rare journalist to whom I still give the benefit of the doubt. Beginning the interview they discuss the new rain water technology that’s just hit the NY stock exchange. I think she honestly doesn’t know (yet) just how deep and long this rabbit hole goes. I look forward to more from her on the topic as she tries to dig though it. And more power to her!

Better get your umbrellas, drought prep and insurance updates, folks!

Corey’s Digs

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221222005128/en/Rainwater-Tech-

And last, but not forgotten, Happy Valentine’s Day!

And one for the fellas, too!

Big Words from Little People

I love it! Had to share this must-read in the on-going Viral saga.

By Eric F. Coppolino
‘WHEN I HAD MY ONE opportunity to ask Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. one question at a fundraising event in Greenwich, CT on April 24, 2022, I chose to ask him about Christine Massey’s work. Mr. Kennedy, the nephew of Pres. John F. Kennedy, heads Children’s Health Defense (CHD), which presents itself as an organization providing the unvarnished, uncensored truth about scientific issues to the public.’

https://open.substack.com/pub/planetwavesfm/p/why-is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-running?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Oh those pesky pots and kettles, all so black!

“The Power to Suppress Dissent
In a Jan. 24 mass email sent by Children’s Health Defense, signed personally by Mr. Kennedy, he wrote of a recent lawsuit his organization filed against the Washington Post, AP and Reuters, “Our groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit has the power to demolish Big Media’s ability to suppress dissent.”
What about the cartel of “little media” monopolizing one side of the story and discrediting the others? Crushing dissent is what exactly he’s doing — that is, the people whose findings dissent from the viewpoint that the “pandemic” crisis was legit. If there was no virus, and the government knew it, and admits it, that has serious implications.”

Bravo, Mr. Coppolino!

Controlled Opposition: Health Freedom

In my book, he just admitted it, though I expected it long ago.

Great article to get up to speed:

https://open.substack.com/pub/janicephillips/p/there-is-an-amazing-debate?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

“Everyone’s favorite “health freedom” guru said as much…of course, not publicly but in an email that’s been shared. You can find the write-up about it here. Planet Waves Interview Details
RFK Jr. in his own words; “I’m grateful for your courage and intellectual integrity. I have an open mind on this issue but no bandwidth to spend the time energy and credibility capital to personally investigate it. I feel the same way towards those people who passionately and knowledgeably argue that 9/11 is an inside job. It could be true. But there are opportunity costs in taking on this cause and I think diminishing returns to my overall effectiveness. I cannot right every wrong or expose every falsehood. I need to be strategic In choosing my battles. If you reflect, you will find that you do the same. I admire and encourage you but I must beg off on this war for the time being. I’m more likely to join if you get it nearer the goal line where the cost/returns ratio improves.”
In other words, you blaze the trail, I’ll reap the rewards of an easy and marked path if and when you get to the destination. What douche bag of epic proportions! He KNOWS the science and knows he’s broadcasting fallacies every single day to his millions of fans (donors) and will continue to perpetuate the Big Lie because the costs are too high. Instead, he’ll let other’s (people who don’t matter to HIM or his All Mighty Dollar) take all the risks.”

The Illusion of Abundance

I grew up on fast food, TV dinners, mac & cheese, like most middle class Americans. And I liked it, like most middle class Americans. Because, I didn’t know any better. Like most middle class Americans.

We had a constant supply of chips, cookies, candy, coke, and all things convenience. Our cupboards and fridge were never empty. I never worried I would go hungry.

And yet, I know now, decades later, I was malnourished. I know this in retrospect, like I know now I was also vaccine injured. It is not until you know what real nourishment feels like, what real health feels like, that you can recognize its opposite.

I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I saw it in time. I traveled, so I saw how different my normal actually was, in the wider context. No other culture ate like we did. Every other culture was healthier than we were. It has since changed in the last decades, as more cultures adapt to Western, particularly the modern American, faux-food diet.

But this realization is far from new or unique. As James Corbett so well documents, and I’m elaborating on now with personal anecdote, food as a weapon is not new or unique.

https://mises.org/library/what-caused-irish-potato-famine

When was food weaponized? Well, let’s just say, it’s been a minute.

My food upbringing was normalized and enhanced— baby formula replacing breast feeding, a dozen vaccines added per decade, cooking from scratch becoming obsolete, supplements becoming de rigeur, pharmaceuticals coming to rule the world of health where food once reigned.

And the conquering continues.

Corbett:
“The answer is simple. We are witnessing a controlled demolition of the food supply chain, one that is intended to result in the destruction of the current industrial farming system as we know it. But this changeover is not intended to return us to truly sustainable farming practices, with local, organic farmers producing crops in accordance with age-old agricultural wisdom. Far from it.
As it turns out, the “solution” to this food crisis being proffered by the billionaires of the corporate-pharmaceutical-medical-industrial-philanthrocapital-military complex is being engineered in laboratories and sold to the public via a bought-and-paid-for mainstream media.
One thing is for certain: the future of food will look very different from anything that we have seen in human history.

Scientists are bioengineering spores that can be inserted into crops and livestock, allowing companies to identify and track food products all the way through the food system, from farm to factory to fork.
DARPA is doling out multi-million-dollar contracts for researchers to find ways “to turn military plastic waste into protein powder” for human consumption.
A company called Amai Proteins is using genetically engineered microbes to create peptides that taste like sugar but are digested like proteins. And the best (read: worst) part is that, “[a]lthough these microbes are technically genetically engineered, the desired products can be purified and legally sold as non-GMO”!”

https://open.substack.com/pub/corbettreport/p/what-is-the-future-of-food?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Just as my home cupboards were full, todays grocery stores are full. As we suffer mass malnutrition.

Yes, some claim shortages because they can no longer find cheap cat food. Whatever.

A food supply abundant with non-nourishing food is worse than empty store shelves. Exponentially worse. We are a population lulled into the illusion of abundance for the last six decades plus.

If you think that’s not a deliberate and highly effective conquering strategy, you are a fool.

Those Were The Days

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that invite in the nostalgia for days long gone. Just this morning I was recalling the times of my youth—until just about a decade ago—when during all that time I used to practice the seasonal closet.

I thought this was normal! So silly of me, so childish. I see that now. But, in my defense, it was such a common thing. Everyone in my family did this, and most of my friends, too. Little did I know those were the good ole days, never to be appreciated again. If only I’d known. I definitely would’ve savored those times more, not treating them as just normal life. It is with significant chagrin that I now understand the ephemeral flight of fancy that seasonal world really was.

There was such a pleasant and proper order to it, you know? You’ve got your summer clothes—the shorts and tank tops and swimming suits and sandals—and there’s only so much room in a closet or in a chest of drawers. It made perfect sense that we would pack up our summer things once autumn came to make way for our sweaters and boots and woolens. Those were some good times!

How we used to love to rummage through those boxes again, having been lost for months out of sight, and then just like an impromptu Christmas, you’d find sweaters in there you totally forgot about and it was like having a whole new wardrobe again! Even moving south did not change this quaint habit—summer closet, winter closet—just a smaller shift of degrees and heavier on the summer selections.

Now my summer crocks sit next to winter boots sit next to slippers sit next to flip flops. Oh, the visual chaos! The sweaters are folded awkwardly next to tank tops. Linen being felt up by Fleece. It’s just, wrong. So wrong. The wool socks are in a false embrace with the anklets. Who can even make sense of the accessories?! The scarves, poor things, silk on wool, just imagine their mutual discomfort.

Last week, this week.
Yo-Yo Season, the New Normal

As if the wardrobe malfunctionings are not enough, there’s the critters, domesticated and wild. And the plants. The dogs and goats shed only to shiver the next week. The buds open only to get killed by frost. All season long.

But, progress has it costs, I get it. The future children will adjust to weather whiplash, and be all the stronger for it. That’s so reassuring. The great minds of Bill Gates and David Keith will come together and all will be scientifically managed in perfect harmony. Nature was so terribly cumbersome for the Great Ones. They deserve better. All the children will be so happy when we are watched over eternally by machines of love and grace.

Food Gratitude

My first deep dive down the conspiracy theory trail was not Geoengineering/Weather Modification, though that’s where I find myself most often these days. Rather, it was food, and health.

I was already well down that particular trail for years before attending a very large conference in Washington, DC where one of the hot topics was GMOs.

One of the speakers was an African woman who had some official title in some African country. All the details about her escape me now, except for one thing she said. She was speaking to us ‘anti-GMO’ types in the audience, and there were a lot of us. She was referring to our privilege to be able to take such a stance as Americans when there were people starving all around the globe.

Of course, that wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a claim. But something about her—a very large, dark-skinned woman donned in her traditional dress with quite a commanding presence—made me waffle, for just a moment. In that moment I looked around the room and realized her statement was having a similar effect on others. As she went on in that line of lecturing, they began to nod and look a bit sheepish after having just feverishly applauded the opposing stance.

It was, after all, a mostly Progressive crowd of over-40s who were clearly well-to-do, judging by the cost of the conference and the topics discussed. She was shaming us, and it was working.

Later on, when I was considering her words while not among the approving crowd, I thought, I wonder how many anti-GMO activists she just converted. She was effective, no doubt. But she wasn’t saying anything new, it was the same diplomatic version of—if you don’t feed Africa with GMO crops we will starve, so save your do-goody, anti-science rhetoric for those who can afford to hear it.

What I hear her saying is actually this: We want a quick fix, a short-term solution for a long-term problem. Then when that solution fails, come in with another one. And then another. If you keep selling those solutions, we’ll keep buying them.

“On the Corruption of GM Science,” John stated, “There is no balance in the GM research field or in the peer-review process or in the publication process. For this we have to thank corporate ownership of science, or at least this brand of it . . . Scientific integrity is one loser, and the public interest is another.” Dr. Brian John to GM Science Review, 2003

2003! It’s almost 20 years and it’s only gotten worse.
(I’ve been writing about it since 2009 if you’d like to see some of those old posts with some very telling comments still attached: Starting From Scratch – Kensho Homestead)

Why do we continue to allow our own Food Gratitude to poison the world with Food Idiocracy?

I’m very grateful my better half contributes whole-heartedly in our efforts to maintain food wisdom on the wee homestead and in cyber-discussions on the topic. Here’s a bit of recent data he’s compiled.

Have you heard the latest?
Well, line up folks, the Food Pyramid is back, new and improved!

Welcome to the ‘Food Compass’!*

What will you find in this 200+ page document crafted by top university scientists?

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43016-021-00381-y/MediaObjects/43016_2021_381_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Egg substitutes scored high than real eggs!
Over seventy processed breakfast cereals scored higher than a boiled egg. Even one called “Malt-O-Meal Marshmallow Mateys”, cause if its got marshmallows its gotta be good for you. 🤮

Some interesting rankings (the higher the score the ‘better’):
Almond milk, unsweetened, chocolate 91
Soy milk, light 75
Chocolate milk, made from no sugar added dry mix with non‐dairy milk (Nesquik) 73
Hot chocolate / Cocoa, made with no sugar added dry mix and non‐dairy milk 70
Whole milk 46

Frosted Mini-wheats is ranked as healthier than ground beef,
Lucky Charms as healthier than chicken…

TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein)** gets a perfect score of 100
Higher than any red meat, poultry, or seafood except Halibut or Tuna
The best poultry: Braised Chicken Liver 71
Boiled goat head and Cooked beaver 43
The best red meat: Raw Ground Beef 38
Braised Beef steak 23

They also list IMITATION cheese as healthier than 40+ of the “real” cheeses listed. (For example cheddar, Monteray, colby, gouda, feta, etc…..).

*”Food Compass is a nutrient profiling system which ranks foods based on their healthfulness using characteristics that impact health in positive or negative ways. It was developed by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.”

The Healthiest Foods You Can Eat, Ranked by Scientists

** “For TVP, first you extract oil from the soybeans using hexane (which leaves about 20 ppm hexane behind in TVP), followed by a sequence of other similarly appetizing processes to degum, bleach, deodorize, and neutralize the taste of the oil. The solids left over are defatted soy flour. That is cooked and extruded through a nozzle into various shapes and sizes, exiting the nozzle while still hot and expanding as it does so. Sometimes some higher-protein concentrate or isolate is also used. The defatted thermoplastic proteins are heated to 300–390 °F, which denatures them into a fibrous, insoluble, porous network that can soak up as much as three times its weight in liquids. As the pressurized molten protein mixture exits the extruder, the sudden drop in pressure causes rapid expansion into a puffy solid that is then dried (it’s basically “shot from guns” like Cocoa Puffs). As much as 50% protein when dry, it is approximately 16%, similar to meat, when rehydrated, and various artificial colors and synthetic flavors can be added during the process to make it imitate different kinds of meat.”

For further reading:

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl 2007

Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public by Steven M. Druker 2015

Foodopoly: The Battle Over The Future Of Food And Farming in America by Wenonah Hauter 2012

Two excellent newer articles at Corey’s Digs:

NEW Controlled Food System Is Now In Place And They Will Stop At Nothing To Accelerate Their Control
New “Food is Medicine” Nutrition Screening, RX, Tracking and Control

Steering Hurricanes

Yes, they can!

Here’s a brief explanation on how it’s done using the recent Hurricane Nicole as an example.

In it Dane explains how the atmospheric spraying through several states, including Texas, in the days leading up to landfall help to direct it. As chance would have it, I photographed the proof in our own skies on Friday, though you can see it plainly on radar as well.

As you can see from the progression of photos, it started off as a lovely blue sky which was fully “cloud” covered within a few hours. In the top row right you can also see where a visible plane is crossing the manufactured trails with no lingering trail behind it.

Special is the New Deranged

You’ve gotta love the myth-makers’ knack for crafting novel ‘non-judgmental’ lingo.

After all, who wants to say anything too closely resembling honesty about someone who caused loads of damage to their own lives and those of nearly everyone around them? That would be so mean.

Especially, obviously, on their deathbeds. This is when kind lies are most required, for the good of those gathered, who definitely do not want to be reminded that they rubbed elbows with such creeps and degenerates all their lives.

Especially, obviously, if there’s inheritance involved. Everyone wants to believe they inherited good, clean money and stuff, not funds garnered by drugs (unless they’re legal!), or theft, or blackmail, or you know, god forbid, blood money.

Who can help but to consider the grandchildren of the Great Fauci, as just one example?

Sure, they can go to his Wikipedia page and read how awesome he is once he’s dead. They can brush up on all his prestigious awards before hearing the sweet tinkling chimes of their personal portion of his vast estate which they have rightfully earned through his unfortunate passing. They can tell their own grandchildren how many lives he saved and how much of their own fortunes they owe to his generosity.

But, what if those poor future grandchildren get ahold of some of the fake news available today? Just imagine how this might affect their innocent psyches? And who would be responsible for this psychological torture?

Well, all the disinfo agents, clearly! Those evil-hearted, hate-spewing degenerates who are never grateful for their assigned heroes. Those same miserable wretches who believe Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and the Bush & Clinton clans and even Trump are ALL deranged psychopaths.

All those crazies who are ruining our democracy!

If you can’t see it yet, put your rose-colored glasses back on!

Doctor’s orders: 3 puppy videos, 10 deep breathes during your time out, 33 rainbow drawings with your permanent markers, then you can re-join us nice, happy folk in civilized society.

Oh yes, that’s so much better! I can see clearly now!

It’s those people who believe the world reeks foul at every turn when in fact the stench is coming from within their own selves! Ahhhh, yes.

If they would just look in the mirror and smell themselves.

If they would just see the world as we do, so full of wonder and joy, then the world would magically shape-shift right before their very eyes and they would be filled as we are with the light of love and joy radiating outward at every angle of the sun, especially from their eyes and anus.

If those haters see a drug-pushing, lying, greedy turd in the mirrored face of the Great Fauci, then they just don’t realize the world is a kaleidoscope of marvels and all they have to do is change their black lenses for pink ones, which would undoubtedly turn their subjective hell into a fantastic earthly paradise!



Put your rose-colored glasses back on, Dude, before you bum everybody out!

Creating the Climate Crisis II

If you’ve wondered why Geoengineering has not been front-and-center in the prolonged and highly contentious discussion on Climate Change, maybe some past quotes from Rabbi Jay Michaelson will prove enlightening. He suggested in 1998 a new Manhattan Project.

“Geoengineering more than just “feels wrong.” [FN227] The tunnel-vision of geoengineering robs the environmental community of the ability to solve other critical problems at the same time as climate change: deforestation and overconsumption, for example. Surely, it is better to just get used to the idea of “living lightly” [FN228] than to scatter dust in the sky or seed oceans with iron, especially when living lightly is good for all of us anyway.

Moreover, an environmentalist’s distaste for the materialistic ideals that undergird the root causes of climate change does not make attempting to thwart those ideals either practical or morally *133 justified. Conspicuous consumption is deeply entrenched in American self-conceptions, and in conceptions of Americans by people in the developing world who want to be like them. [FN231]

I suggest it is both unwise and counter-democratic to tell billions of consumers that “We Know Better,” and set about changing deep structures without regard to the life-defining goals of the consumers themselves. Such action is unwise because it pins the biosphere’s integrity on the hope of overcoming something deeply ingrained in Western culture. And it is counter-democratic because, until the members of that culture change its constitutive forces, overcoming them in the name of a paternalistic deep environmentalism thwarts their clearly expressed preferences. [FN232]

To take a more familiar example, it would surely be optimal to empower oppressed indigenous people at the same time as we save a tropical rainforest by granting local populations more control over forest resources. But if a simple purchase of land will save more rainforest, and a separate human-rights campaign can help the indigenous people, and if each has a better chance for success than the integrated empowerment solution, then perhaps it is wiser to divide and conquer. Better to divide opponents whose interests differ and reach incremental consensus than fight them all at once and lose. A policy of land rights for indigenous people may offend agricultural interests, governing power elites, present title holders, and a host of other constituencies. A land purchase, on the other hand, offends fewer people, may please some (power elites for instance), and is more likely to succeed. Meanwhile, a separate human rights campaign is unlikely to interest agricultural users or (some) transnational corporations, and it also is more likely to succeed. Killing one bird at a time may be the “right” way to go, because it minimizes opposition and makes coalition-building easier.

Climate change is an excellent subterfuge; it allows environmentalists to “get at” fossil fuel use, deforestation, perhaps even overconsumption itself– in the name of saving civilization as we know it. Geoengineering, in contrast, gets at nothing other than climate change. On the contrary, not only does sowing plots of ocean with iron filings not save the rainforest, it costs environmentalists precious leverage in their efforts to do so because some of the pressure to address the underlying causes is relieved. [FN240] One of the very strengths of geoengineering–that it requires relatively little sacrifice–is thus one of its great drawbacks to political environmentalists. Anyone who wants to use climate change as a way to “get at” some undesirable but politically popular activity will be sorely disappointed by a geoengineering project.

Political sleight-of-hand can engender a certain ambivalence. It is somewhat dishonest, and can be counterproductive, as in the case of a hopeless but photogenic species such as the California condor being saved instead of more needy but less attractive candidates. Sleight-of-hand can also be a tremendous gamble; trying to kill two birds with one stone is often riskier than trying to kill just one. In the case of climate change, using the biosphere’s climatic integrity as a leverage point is quite a risk: if scientists are right, we may be in deep trouble if GHG emissions and deforestation (the “real targets”) are not reduced. When the nominal goal is itself important, sleight-of-hand is a high-stakes game.

In the end, the debate about geoengineering is largely a debate about what sorts of environmental policies to pursue in an imperfect world. It seems almost preposterous to buck the trends of holistic systems management and suggest running like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice from symptom to symptom. It may also seem as though driving less or cutting fewer trees is simpler than scattering dust particles in the stratosphere. It is certainly more elegant. But when the Damocles’ sword of massive biotic disruption is hanging over our heads, we should choose what works. And the bottom line is that, though the regulatory strategies envisioned in Kyoto must continue to play out their roles, we need more than a global Marshall Plan of incentives and reductions to avert potentially disastrous climatic change.

We need a Manhattan Project.”

Excerpts taken from: Jay Michaelson in the Stanford Environmental Law Journal

Geoengineering: A Climate Change Manhattan Project Stanford Environmental Law Journal January, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University; Jay Michaelson geomanhattanproj.pdf

Jay Michaelson also writes about LGBTQ, abortion, spirituality and Jewish issues for top publications.

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