Heute hat David Keith, Professor an der Harvard University, im Rahmen einer größeren Konferenz zum Thema offiziell verkündet, dass er in Kürze ein Geoengineering Experiment in der freien Natur starten will.
Worum geht es genau? Keith und seine Kollegen wollen verschieden Substanzen in die Stratosphäre einbringen, um den Effekt eines natürlichen Vulkans zu imitieren und damit die global Temperatur nach unten zu drehen. Experimente dieser Art stehen eigentlich unter einem Moratorium der Biodiversitätskonvention der Vereinten Nationen (CBD), bei der die USA aber leider kein Mitglied ist.
Warum Geoengineering – und vor allem diese Technologie des Solar Radiation Management – prolematisch und äußert riskant ist, erläutert dieses kurze Briefing der ETC Group.
Hat das alles etwas mit Trump zu tun? Direkt vielleicht nicht, aber indirekt in jedem Fall. Für die neue Regierung in Washington ist Geoengineering die perfekte Lösung für ein Problem, das es gar nicht gibt. Die ETC Group erklärt:
The Trump White House has several connections to the geoengineers already. Leading geoengineering advocates now close to the administration include former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson (now Secretary of State) whose oil company has been engaged in moving forward the geoengineering debate for decades; Former house speaker and Trump confidante Newt Gingrich, who has strongly advocated for SRM and established a geoengineering project at the fossil-fuel funded American Enterprise Institute; and geoengineering hawk David Schnare, who has previously laid out detailed plans in congressional hearings on how to start SRM tests and move to rapid deployment. Schnare and other climate skeptics see geoengineering as a way to address climate change impacts while avoiding admitting the role of fossil fuels. Until last week, Schnare was on the Trump administration transition team in the EPA.
Und auch wenn die Mainstream Medien dieses Experiment nun vermutlich voller Interesse, Begeisterung und Faszination begleiten werden, gibt es zum Glück auch zahlreiche kritische Stimmen neben der ETC Group. Hier ein paar starke Zitate:
Tom BK Goldtooth, Executive Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
„As Indigenous Peoples, we are unified in our opposition to all forms of geoengineering. As human beings, we are entirely dependent upon our respectful relationship with the natural world. Everything the dominant world does has far reaching consequences that we cannot predict. We are now faced with many of those consequences from the exploitation of the natural world that threaten the future existence of all life on Mother Earth. To assert that human knowledge has advanced so fully that we can predict with absolute certainty that no harm will be a consequence of our actions is categorically false. Our Indigenous traditional teachings, lifestyles, spirituality, cultures and leadership of our people has sustained us for millennia and will do so for countless future generations but only if the world adheres to the Natural Laws of Creation and the Precautionary Principle.“
Karin Nansen, Chair of Friends of the Earth International
“Geoengineering is a dangerous and risky distraction from real solutions to the climate crisis. We need a complete transformation of our energy systems, food systems, economic systems. But rich countries, transnational corporations and other powerful vested interests are desperate to divert our attention from system change, and from radical emissions reductions needed at source. Friends of the Earth International rejects large-scale geoengineering as an unproven technology which could lead to land or resource grabbing and dispossession of local communities.”
Vandana Shiva, Navdanya, India
“The mechanical mind of mastery and control is at the root of the ecological crisis including climate change. It cannot be the basis of addressing the climate problem through more reckless manipulation as geoengineering. As Einstein warned us „You cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it. Our fragile, complex self organised Earth cannot be subject to more violent manipulation. In ecological agriculture, which returns organic matter to the soil we have a non violent, tested and proven solution to cooling the planet, while growing more and better food.”
Nnimmo Bassey, HOME Foundation, Nigeria
“It is unacceptable that while nations suffer the brutal impacts of climate change profit-driven corporations plan to colonize the sky through geoengineering, deny global warming and lock in climate inaction. The world must be weaned from fossil fuels, cut emissions at source and not permit any manipulation of the climate that has the potential to pile more harm on Africa and other territories.”
Barbara Unmüßig, Heinrich Böell Foundation, International
“Our climate is a common good that concerns all of mankind. No one has the right to unilaterally tinker with the global thermostat. Outdoor experiments of solar radiation management, aimed at manipulating our climate on a global scale, risk unleashing technofixes for our climate crisis without tackling its root causes. Basic democratic principles of legitimisation and accountability must instead be upheld that ensure that the precautionary principle is adhered to and all possible risks and side effects of new technologies are considered, before they are put into practice.”
Elizabeth Bravo, Acción Ecológica, Ecuador
“Como defensoras de los derechos de la naturaleza, nos oponemos a la geoingeniería porque consideramos que la geoingeniería viola los derechos de la naturaleza, tal como son reconocidos por nuestra Constitución, porque interfiere en los ciclos biológicos y evolutivos, lo que podría conducir a cambios evolutivos impredecibles. Los efectos de la SRM podrían afectar la soberanía alimentaria de los pueblos, los cambios en la radiación solar generarán cambios en los patrones de lluvias y vientos, así como en la vegetación y la biodiversidad, generando incertidumbres en las redes tróficas y en la disposición de alimentos”
Translation:
“As defenders of the rights of nature, we oppose geoengineering because we consider that it violates the rights of nature, as recognized by our Constitution, because it interferes with biological and evolutionary cycles, which could lead to unpredictable evolutionary changes. The effects of SRM could affect peoples‘ food sovereignty, as changes in solar radiation will lead to changes in rainfall and wind patterns as well as on vegetation and biodiversity, creating uncertainties in food webs and harvests“
Joachim Schellnhuber hat in einem Artikel von 2011 ganz gut beschrieben, welche Gefahren mit SRM (Solar Radiation Management) einhergehen:
„On closer inspection, SRM exhibits MAD traits. The latter acronym stands for “mutual assured destruction,” that is, the ominous doctrine of the arms race frenzy. If the climate can be influenced rather inexpensively by sending aerosol rockets to the stratosphere, then who decides when and where the buttons are pushed? Certain countries like Russia might actually welcome some warming of their territories. So would they shoot down, say, Indian or Chinese geoengineering missiles launched for stabilizing the Asian monsoon pattern or other tipping elements in the Earth system? One step further up the escalation ladder, the supposed beneficiaries of climate change might deliberately increase their greenhouse gas emissions for overcompensating SRM, and so on. Additionally, the crucial point that temporal failure of artificial insolation reduction would most probably wreak havoc has been made repeatedly.“
Den perfekten Ort für die Ballonfahrten in die Stratosphäre scheinen die Wissenschaftler aus Harvard jedenfalls schon gefunden haben. Vor wenigen Wochen wurde eine neue Stratosphären-Forschungsstation mit Raumfahrtflughafen in der Wüste von Arizona eröffnet („World View“). World View’s Gründerin und CEO, Jane Poynter, war übrigens Biosphere 2 crew member. Rings a bell? Trumps Berater Steve Bannon war CEO von Biosphere 2… It’s a small world…
Das Geld für das Vorhaben stammt übrigens zu einem Großteil von Bill Gates persönlich – und der ist ja bekanntermaßen nicht sparsam, wenn es darum geht, die Welt mit neuen Technologien zu beglücken, die nebenbei auch noch die Weltprobleme aus dem Weg räumen sollen.