The prospect of Trump deep-sixing the Paris treaty highlights a pre-existing issue: the emission reduction targets are unachievable. The world economy is not a college marching band at a half-time show, which turns on a dime to march off in a different direction, drums beating.
Most people involved realize this, but also know that it must be done to the extent possible, whatever else happens. You set “stretch goals”, make no concession before its time, and stay in formation. And the agreement does provide milestones at which participants can officially & incrementally acknowledge the obvious, without being accused of bad faith. Adding CDR to the mix should, in theory, be a decorous process by which careful calls for negative emissions are issued according to the sanctioned timeline. If need be, solar geoengineering - wreathed in caveats - might someday be added to the agenda. (Until then, keep it strictly on the ‘down low’). But what if the biggest player withdraws? It’s no longer possible to pretend that the emissions targets are not absurd. And CDR has some of the same constraints as emissions reduction: multiple players, multiple untested candidate technologies, slow deployment, & high cost. If the US will no longer commit to emissions reduction it certainly will not commit to CDR, with similar results. Some players may despair and quietly consider, ‘ahead of schedule’, solar geoengineering to save themselves until the U.S. comes to its senses (and let Trump deflect some of the blame). I’m wary of the ‘Plan A, Plan B, Plan C’ framing, but I suspect that solar geoengineering just got a promotion closer to the head of the alphabet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
