Ahead of the publication of her new book “The Nature of Nature: The Metabolic Disorder of Climate Change”, Dr. Vandana Shiva reflects on the risks that solar geoengineering poses to life itself, and the fallacy of using more pollution to solve a climate crisis created by pollution.
Mother Earth is living; she is self-regulating, and her biosphere regulates the atmosphere and climate. The extraction and burning of fossil fuels and proliferation of industrialisation has destroyed the Earth’s biodiversity and biosphere, resulting in climate havoc, and a disruption of the Earth’s self regulatory capacity. Climate change is therefore a metabolic disorder of the living Earth.
Life on Earth is possible because of the energy we receive from the Sun. The Sun’s energy is transformed by the green leaf through photosynthesis, which uses carbon dioxide to create oxygen and carbohydrates that provide the means for all life. Ecologically, all life is plant-based, because life is based on photosynthesis. Plants are the basis of life on Earth. The Earth has regulated her climate and temperature for over four billion years through photosynthesis.
With the blessings of the Sun, seeds grow into plants that become the green mantle of the Earth, returning to the ground as organic matter to create living soil, and providing humans and all beings with all of their needs. Plants as the basis of life teach us health and wellbeing. They teach us life; what life is, and how to live.
The pollution of the atmosphere through the release of greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas has led to the intensification of the greenhouse effect, trapping extra heat. This is the cause of global warming and climate instability; fossil fuel pollution is the root cause of climate change. But now, the greedy, domineering and reductionist mindset that brought us to this place is offering us more pollution as a solution to the pollution problem.
The planetary emergency is leading billionaires to seek new levels of control and profit-making by engineering the Earth on a planetary scale. Geoengineering is the latest example of the mechanical mind trying to “engineer” life on Earth. Philanthrocapitalism is being used once again to derail the international agenda and push the future of our planet towards extinction and ecological collapse.
Solar geoengineering and its various technological approaches are new ways of manipulating the climate and weather, and are based on hubris, ignorance and arrogance. Putting pollution in the form of aerosols into the atmosphere to block the sun, called Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, would have wide-ranging and poorly-understood impacts, such as exacerbating severe droughts, causing acid rain, reducing photosynthesis and harming food production.
Just as non-renewable, genetically-engineered seeds have to be bought by farmers every year, deliberately geoengineering the climate will have to be undertaken continually—year on year—in order to mask the effects of rising emissions. Even “limited deployment” is predicted to require over 60,000 flights per year in order to deliver 1.5 billion tonnes of sulphur to the stratosphere, at a huge cost.
With the support of Bill Gates and numerous other tech billionaires, Harvard University was planning to put sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere in order to test how this would block the sun and manipulate the Earth’s climate. The Sámi Indigenous People stopped the Harvard geoengineering experiments in Sweden, which eventually led to the cancellation of the whole project. The Sámi are part of a mobilisation of Indigenous communities world-wide to stop this false solution to climate change, which will make the problem worse by further disrupting the climate and the biosphere.
This mechanistic reductionist paradigm treats living organisms, including the Earth, as machines that can be engineered. Genetic engineering and geoengineering are a continuation of anthropocentrism and eco apartheid. Those who put us on the dead end road are now sending us fast forward towards the precipice, blinded by limitless greed, profit and control, and indifferent to the life-threatening costs that they are forcing the Earth and her people to bear.
The Sun is not the problem; sunlight is life-giving. The problem is pollution. Adding more pollution to the atmosphere to dim the Sun through geoengineering will only aggravate the climate catastrophe, as well the food crisis and a myriad of other crises. It is not a solution. It is recklessly experimenting with Mother Earth, without the consent of her people and taking no accountability for the consequences of these actions.
The engineering mindset ignores both the blessings of the Sun and the risks of new pollution aggravating climate chaos. Blocking sunshine risks reducing photosynthesis, reducing the biosphere’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, and reducing the production of food.
Geoengineering must be prohibited globally, and scientists and activists concerned about climate change should be paying close attention to plans to deliberately change the climate through geoengineering.
The billionaire elites driving solar geoengineering research see it as a climate solution, but I see it as stealing the sunshine, the basis of life on Earth.
I see it as stealing our food, which is produced by plants through photosynthesis and the gift of the Sun.
I see it as the theft of our breath, the oxygen we breathe, which is produced by photosynthesis, using sunlight.
I see geoengineering as a crime against Mother Earth and all her beings.
