{"id":2866,"date":"2017-08-20T07:30:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T14:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2021-10-11T22:59:34","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T05:59:34","slug":"unanswered-questions-for-geoengineers-reed-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/2017\/08\/unanswered-questions-for-geoengineers-reed-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Unanswered Questions for Geoengineers & Reed College"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Update<\/strong>: On 11 Oct 2021 the Reed College Board of Trustees announced its decision to divest the college’s endowment from fossil fuels. Read about it here<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

“The Paris agreement aims to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 to 2C above preindustrial temperature, but achieving this goal requires\u00a0much higher levels of mitigation than currently planned<\/strong>.<\/em> [emphasis added]” So\u00a0begins an editorial, “How to govern geoengineering,”<\/strong><\/a> appearing on p. 231 of the 21 July 2017<\/strong> issue of Science<\/strong> magazine.<\/p>\n

The 3 authors, all of whom work at\u00a0the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance (C2G2) Initiative<\/strong><\/a>, describe\u00a0the two most talked-about versions of “geoengineering” (human actions designed to intentionally change the climate): carbon dioxide removal (CDR)<\/strong><\/a> and solar radiation management (SRM)<\/strong><\/a>. Both approaches currently run aground on\u00a0unsolved technical problems, and, as the authors point out, “geoengineering does not obviate the need for\u00a0radical reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero<\/strong>, combined with adaptation to inevitable climate impacts. [emphasis added]”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To put it in straightforward\u00a0terms, we can talk all we want about\u00a0technical ‘engineering + adaptation’ fixes for the planet, but we still\u00a0need to stop producing greenhouse gases. This means halting the burning of fossil fuels, something that will happen only when Reed College, and other shareholders in fossil fuel companies, stop clinging to a narrowly defined view of “fiduciary responsibility” that says short-term profit is a viable option even if it leads to\u00a0long-term disaster.<\/p>\n

I have 34 years of college teaching at 3 different institutions under my belt, and I know that what we do is worthwhile, but I cannot identify a single college program that would\u00a0justify financial transactions that\u00a0will ultimately make refugees out of the\u00a0millions who live in\u00a0coastal communities, and threaten the global food supply, to name just two likely consequences of climate change (“The Uninhabitable Earth,”<\/strong><\/a> New York Magazine, 9 July 2017 and “Are We as Doomed as That New York Magazine Article Says?”<\/strong><\/a> The Atlantic, 10 July 2017).<\/p>\n

Our institution’s approach to the fossil fuel industry needs to change, and yet, even as I try to picture the necessary changes I know that these will need to\u00a0be managed carefully and thoughtfully. Overnight divestment is not a viable option. Unfortunately, what concerns me is that the College’s leaders have so far\u00a0denied<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that there is even a problem here worthy of their attention. They find it easier to blow the dust off of documents written for a bygone age, and point to phrases like\u00a0“fiduciary responsibility” and “protecting academic freedom,” phrases that will almost certainly\u00a0lose all meaning in the world that is now appearing all around us.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it helps to look at the data. Here are\u00a0globally averaged CO2 levels<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(measured at the ocean’s surface as reported by the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, NOAA) taken from\u00a0the last 27 years of my\u00a0Reed career:<\/p>\n