Annie Meredith

I was sitting down watching Catalyst on ABC 1 last night after a long day in clinic, one of my Thursday night pleasures. The program explores latest innovations in science and is one of my favourite indulgences – it often looks at items of interest well outside of mainstream thinking and for that reason alone, I believe it to be worth the time.

Last night one of the items discussed was Geo-engineering – the notion that we can combat some of the effects of climate change by the deliberate engineering of our climate. Our planet’s climate is a highly complex, interlocking, self-organising system. It’s been under Nature’s control for aeons. Could we intervene and take over some of the control? Advocates of geo-engineering believe we could. And what’s more, right now The Royal Society, a prestigious organization that has been going since 1660 and whose members include a collection of some of the world’s top scientists, have been seriously investigating the notion.

Moreover, it has now taken on a political urgency and has been placed on the political agenda.

Some of the reasons given for the wholesale interference in the natural eco-balance of the climate include:

1/ economic – a convenient way of tackling global warming without adversely affecting the global economy

2/ avoidance of the need to tackle the problem through reduction of global emissions

The solutions discussed were alarming and dangerous and include:

1/ releasing sulfate particles into the sky, which is what happens when a volcano erupts. Observation of the after-effects of volcanic eruptions shows sulfate particles have a long-term cooling effect because they sit in the stratosphere and reflect the sun’s radiation back into space. It’s like fighting pollution with pollution. Just as carbon emissions warm things up on Earth, sulfate particles should cool things down. However the downside is that they destroy the ozone layer, our long term ‘security blanket’ that protects us from harmful solar emissions.

2/ adding iron to the oceans as a fertilizer to help algae grow. Algae suck up carbon, like trees on dry land, and would theoretically deplete our carbon levels. However, the trouble is the effects are unknown as it could poison the oceans with unforeseen side-effects on marine life.

3/ subtracting carbon from the atmosphere with the use of giant mirrors, generating tremendous heat to the maximum concentration of about 5000 suns. Temperatures at this intensity can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and trapped. Theoretically, the trapped carbon is then mixed with a simple carbon compound carbon oxide, which, when further heated, turns into the substance calcium carbonate or limestone. So effectively, the carbon is stored in limestone. However, how well can the absorption of carbon from the atmosphere be controlled? Unless carefully monitored it could lead to another ice-age!!!

Such a ‘problem-solving approach to the issue of global warming is a little like the ‘magic bullet’ approach of mainstream medicine. It is not the major symptom that ends up being the problem. With such a blinkered view on the problem, one misses the whole context and often ends up with side-effects that are more serious than the original issue.

By tinkering with a planetary system that has a place in the larger context of our solar system and galaxy/ies beyond our own, we risk disregarding the intelligence of a whole system, in favour of the smaller view.

There is no doubt that any and all of these notions would impact the climate and bring about changes that would be impossible to reverse.  For example, there would be large changes in the monsoon pattern and tropical rainfall, affecting the whole of the hydrological cycle, As the climate is largely driven from the tropics, the planetary climate would be inalterably changed and we could be in a worse situation than we are at the moment.

What rocks my boat is that there is no evidence that we have learned from the mistakes made with the ’magic bullet’ approach that mainstream medicine rides on.

The inability to take the ‘big picture’ into account when treating the human body means that many current medical treatments and pharmaceutical drugs based on this narrow-viewed principle has resulted in not only a high level of iatrogenic  (doctor-induced) disease, but also an alarming degradation in the public health, as people en masse hand over the responsibility of their health to a practitioner unprepared to take a wholistic approach to healing both the body and mind. Targeting just the physical body, from a problem solving perspective, means that as people ‘s physical health deteriorates over time due to the imbalance brought about by treatment with strong medicinals that leave the body systems unbalanced, the mental and emotional state of people suffers similarly.

Is this where we are heading with these plans to interfere in the planetary systems that have served our world for hundreds of thousands of years? I ask myself – who gave them the right to interfere with our planet, taking upon themselves the risk that they may engender grave imbalances in the systems of the planet already groaning under mismanagement and misguided policies?

When we surrender to the feminine principles of co-operation, harmony, conservation and peaceful co-existence, the thought of such aggressive and controlling measures against our planet does not stand up to scrutiny.

a delicate balance