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Geoengineering could create winners and losers

November 13, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Geoengineering – deliberate interventions to alter the climate and curb climate change – is a controversial topic, to say the least. Once practically considered taboo even to discuss, there in increasing interest in at least exploring various ideas about how to halt or reverse climate change through direct actions that impact global temperatures.

Putting aside the very real concerns about the risks and dangers associated with such action, there is also the issue that climate interventions may create dramatically different effects across the globe, benefitting some areas and adversely affecting others.

A recent study by scientists at Rutgers University tackled this very issue. Published in the journal Nature Food, it described the results of computer models simulating the impacts of stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI), which is spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it would partially shield the Earth from the Sun, lowering temperatures.

The study looked at 11 different SAI scenarios and found that none of them benefitted everyone. Uncontrolled global warming favors crop production in cold, high-latitude areas such as Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, and our northern border states. Moderate amounts of SAI favors food production in the mid-latitudes (such as in the US and Europe.) Large amounts of intervention favors agricultural production in the tropics.

Even if geoengineering might not have dire consequences – which is by no means certain – it would create winners and losers. Nations may have different ideas of what constitutes an optimal global temperature. So, who gets to decide where to set the global thermostat? The prospects for conflict loom large.

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Climate Intervention Technologies May Create Winners and Losers in World Food Supply

Photo, posted November 18, 2021, courtesy of Conall via Flickr.

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What’s The Best Way To Reduce Emissions? | Earth Wise

April 1, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels, like coal, oil, and gas. It’s one way to make the users of carbon fuels pay for the climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

According to a new study by researchers at Ohio State University, putting a price on producing carbon is the cheapest and most efficient policy change that legislators can make in order to reduce climate change-causing emissions.

The case study, which was recently published in the journal Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, looked at the impact that a variety of policy changes would have on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in Texas. The researchers found that assigning a price to carbon, based on the cost of climate change, was most effective.

The study did not look at how policy changes might affect the reliability of the Texas power system, an important consideration after the failure of the state’s power grid following winter storms in February.

But the study did examine other policies and found that they were either more expensive or not as effective, including mandates that a certain amount of energy in a portfolio come from renewable sources. Subsidizing renewable energy sources was also found to be less effective.

According to researchers, market-based solutions have previously proven effective combating environmental issues. For example, a cap-and-trade approach was used to reduce levels of sulfur dioxide, one of the chemicals that causes acid rain.

For the sake of the climate, we should probably tax carbon.

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