Geoengineering, Permaculture and Transition Towns

Introduction

There is increasing concern among meteorologists working with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that governments will not curb greenhouse emissions enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming, usually considered to be 2°C by 2100. Many members of the public must share this pessimism, and are also concerned about dwindling supplies of low-cost petroleum.

Among the possible responses to holding such a belief are: denial/avoidance, campaigning and focusing on adaptation. In this unit we will look at three alternative responses, all outside mainstream thinking: geoengineering, permaculture and Transition Towns.

At first sight, geoengineering may seem at odds with the other two, but I see all three strategies as logical responses to a realistic belief: namely, that the large industrial nations will probably not force their populations to reduce emissions to the extent that will prevent dangerous warming, until it is too late to make much difference.

Permaculture was developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren as a positive response to industrial systems of production that Mollison identified as destroying Earth's ecosystems. The aim is to build self-sufficient and resilient settlements, and as such it addresses not only climate change but a range of other modern problems.

Transition Towns was a concept developed by Louise Rooney and popularised by Rob Hopkins, who was her permaculture teacher. The focus is to build resilience on medium scales: the scale of about 20 years, and the scale of a small town, the neighbourhood of a city or a group of villages. It has given rise to a movement that is spreading rapidly in the UK and elsewhere.

Geoengineering is the deliberate manipulation of a planet to make it safer or easier for humans to live on in large numbers. There are a number of geoengineering proposals that aim specifically to address the issue of global warming, and prevent runaway climate change or abrupt climate change. The aim is either to prevent some solar heat energy from entering/remaining in the atmosphere/oceans, or to help heat escape faster into space.

Statement by author on his personal bias

Unusually, I am personally sympathetic to both gentle geoengineering solutions (such as wetland restoration) and transition towns/permaculture. I am strongly in favor of using the earth's natural cooling systems to buy more time for emissions reductions and work actively on this through The Global Cooling Project and the Land-Atmosphere Resilience Initiative. I am somewhat negative about:

1. Conventional agro-industry when there is over-use of fertiliser and high energy use for production and transport – however, I think we will need the best of what the agriculture sector offers if we are to make it to 2060 without global famine.

2. A slow-and-steady approach to climate change using 'affordable' carbon emissions reductions, only because I believe this will be too little too late, and because I believe it is unjust to many people in Africa and Asia who are already experiencing negative impacts of climate change. In this I am influenced by the recent writing of James Lovelock and a range of warnings from mainstream meteorologists, plus specific warnings from paleo-climatologists on abrupt climate change.

Unit authored by Ray Taylor

Learning outcomes

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

• understand geo-engineering, permaculture and transition/post-carbon;

• (i) as concepts, and

• (ii) as groups of people and movements seeking to tackle climate change and other threats to the well-being of human populations.

1 Geoengineering – what is it?

1.1 Definitions of geoengineering

Geoengineering is normally described as the deliberate modification of earth's environment on a large scale ‘to suit human needs and promote habitability’. The US National Academy of Sciences defined geoengineering as ‘options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry’.

Wikipedia has an excellent introduction to the subject, where it states: ‘geoengineering is usually taken to mean proposals to deliberately manipulate the earth's climate to counteract the effects of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions’. See the Wikipedia article and its links for geoengineering. (While well structured, this article by no means contains a complete list of the geoengineering options that have been proposed.)

It is worth pointing out that we have, in effect, been unintentionally geoengineering the earth's climate for the last 300+ years by changing:

• the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

• the albedo (reflectivity) of millions of square kilometres

• the water-holding capacity of many landscapes, etc.

While this does not strictly qualify as geoengineering because it wasn't, in most cases, deliberate, the effect is much the same. Measures to reduce, for example, the high temperature of road surfaces by making them paler and more reflective could therefore be described as reverse geoengineering or un-geoengineering.

One of the most respected voices in this field is Professor Ken Caldeira, who also runs a Googlegroup on the subject where it is possible for anyone to join the group, participate or just follow the discussions.

1.2 Forms of geoengineering

One of the approaches most likely to be affordable is the deliberate pollution of the stratosphere with sulphate to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface. This would be cheap as it could be done by the addition of sulphur to jet fuel. We know it would work to slow down warming because it imitates a large volcanic eruption. (The earth was cooler for more than a year after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo because of the ejection of large quantities of particles.) But there are many possible negative consequences:

• ocean acidification continues or even increases

• acid rain

• possible negative health impacts

• other unintended consequences.

I personally feel we should do everything possible to avoid needing to resort to a strategy as potentially negative as this one.

Another geoengineering approach is to support the earth's natural cooling systems in the tropics, which are mainly mediated by low altitude clouds and cumulonimbus clouds. You can find information about this from the Global Warming Project website; in particular see their report, The Global Cooling Project, pages 1–20.

Since about 2007 there has been a lot of discussion about the use of biochar (charcoal generated through a chemical process) for storing carbon soil (or even for burial at sea) as a form of geoengineering. If you do a Google search you will find a range of opinions from strong opponents (e.g. Vandana Shiva) to strong proponents (e.g. Peter Read). Overall, it appears the jury is still out and that biochar has prematurely been over-promoted as a climate fix.

An article that is particularly strong on assessing the relative benefits of a range of geoengineering strategies, though it is not exhaustive, is by Lenton and Vaughan.

1.3 Ethics of geoengineering

The main criticisms of geoengineering are:

• there may be unpredicted, undesirable consequences

• resorting to geoengineering reduces the pressure to reduce greenhouse emissions

• limiting global temperature increase will not prevent ocean acidification by CO₂

• we need to learn not to treat the earth as an object, but take our place in the community of animals and plants with whom this is a shared home (the deep ecology perspective).

An article in the Stanford Environmental Law Journal argues for geo-engineering because:

The Worldchanging website has an article that considers the ‘geoethics’ that should guide any geoengineering decisions.

The article proposes the following principles should guide all decisions to use or not to use geoengineering:

• Interconnectedness – planetary systems do not exist in isolation and changes made to one system will have implications for other systems.

• Diversity – on balance, a diverse ecosystem is more resilient and flexible, better able to adapt to natural changes.

• Foresight – consideration of effects of changes should embrace the planetary pace, not the human pace.

• Integration – as human societies are part of the earth's systems, changes made should take into consideration effects on human communities, and the needs of human communities should not be discounted or dismissed when considering overall impacts.

• Expansion of Options – on balance, choices made should increase the number of options and opportunities for future generations, not reduce them.

• Reversibility – changes made to planetary systems should be done in a way that allows for reconsideration of unintended and unexpected consequences.

Yet another view on geoengineering can be found in the work of deep ecologists. They argue that human and non-human life has equal value and both play a vital function in the global ecosystem. One deep ecologist of note is Joanna Macy and you can explore her views by watching her talks on YouTube. A good place to start is by viewing her talk on ‘The Great Turning’.

2 Permaculture

2.1 What is permaculture and how could it be universally applied?

Bill Mollison is the originator of the permaculture concept, which he saw as a positive route to dealing with environmental degradation and possible global famine. If you search YouTube, results will come up for drylands, tropical, cool lands, urban, temperate. In a series of clips, Bill explains how permaculture principles can be applied in a range of climate zones.

Bill Mollison talks about ‘How to Feed the Hungry in Africa’

Geoff Lawton of The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia is a very active promoter of permaculture practice. You can find Geoff Lawton talking about his work on YouTube; see him talking about ‘Greening the desert’.

David Pimentel is an agriculture scientist. He is scathing about biofuels – mainly on the grounds that it takes more energy to grow them than they give back in fuel, and because the land could be better used for other purposes. Pimentel doubts that existing forms of agro-industrial farming can be sustained, because of both climate change and resource depletion (leading to higher prices for water, fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides and fuel).

2.2 Limitations of permaculture as an approach to tackling climate change

Critics of a ‘permaculture solution’ to climate change come from two perspectives: agro-industry and climate alarmism.

Agro-industry critique

(It is hard to find any critique of permaculture per se, but quite easy to find criticism of organic farming. For each of the critiques of organic farming I highlight the possible limitations of the critique if it were applied to permaculture.)

Borlaug's criticism is on the grounds of yield. He believes that organic farming yields less than conventional methods. He is comparing conventional farming with irrigation to organic farming without irrigation. This seems unfair as organic farmers and permaculturalists are generally pro-rainwater harvesting and irrigation. Also, it is important to remember that yields from permaculture are higher than normal organic farming, since there is potential for harvesting throughout the year. In addition, in the tropics it is possible to have multiple levels of crop (tree; bush; tall plants; ground cover) in the same small plot of land.

3 The Transition Movement and the Post Carbon Institute

The Transition Movement and the Post Carbon Institute advocate a pro-active approach to preparing a low-carbon economy, for both climate change and peak oil reasons. Transition towns are a grassroots, bottom-up approach, often planning on a 20-year timescale. The Post-Carbon Institute's campaign is aimed at local and regional governments.

The following resources provide helpful information:

• Post Carbon Institute website

• Transition Towns UK wiki

• Transition US website

• Wikipedia article on peak oil

• Peak oil online primer

• The best list of critiques of transition is in a pro-transition blog

• ‘Transition culture’, a thoughtful article by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Movement

4 A synthesis of geoengineering and permaculture – ‘geonurturing’

In the following discussion I assume that the climate situation is beyond critical, as suggested by James Lovelock in this Guardian article, ‘Enjoy life while you can’ (March 2008).

Lovelock suggests that a rapid decrease in petrochemicals use, especially diesel, could be dangerous because particulate levels emitted alongside CO₂ by diesel engines may also decrease rapidly, reducing global dimming. Global dimming is the effect of particulates from diesel engines, forest fires and general pollution. These particulates reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the planet and have therefore shielded the earth from the full force of greenhouse warming. Lovelock also believes that many of the earth's biogeochemical systems are now in positive feedback, meaning that it is too late to prevent rapid and dangerous warming by emissions reductions alone.

If we believe that the bio-geochemical systems are in positive feedback, we can draw an analogy with a human child who has a high and rising fever.

A fever can be caused by different bacteria and viruses. The ideal intervention is early killing of the bacteria or viruses by the child's own immune system. If this is delayed for any reason, the patient's fever rises. If the fever rises too high, the child can start to have fits, which can cause permanent brain damage. Treatment with antibiotics at a late stage (i.e. treating the cause) may cause a temporary acceleration in the fever as virus/bacteria/immune particles are released into the bloodstream. For this reason, and in order to prevent fits/brain damage, it makes sense to treat the symptom; i.e. reduce the fever by other means than treating the cause. This can be done, for example, with paracetamol and a lukewarm bath. This is called secondary prevention: by treating the symptom you prevent the brain damage that could be caused if the fever escalates and causes fits.

So, like the child with fever:

• the temperature of the planet is already rising

• if we treat the cause too abruptly, we may accelerate the temperature rise

• if we do nothing, the temperature may rise to a level where there is major permanent damage

• there may be things we can do to gently bring down the temperature, while gradually treating the cause.

Steps in caring for a child with a rising fever could include:

• giving any necessary first aid plus secondary prevention (i.e. treating the fever)

• making sure the child has sufficient water and good nutrition

• identifying and treating the cause(s) appropriately

• looking at why the child became ill and considering changes to prevent it happening again (good nutrition, healthy living, balance, etc.)

• building resilience and acknowledging that passing through states of illness and recovery is in itself a healthy process.

5 Getting involved

Permaculture

There are many ways to learn more about permaculture worldwide. Simply Google .

Alternatively, start with your own garden or a small plot of land. There are many excellent books available, including free ebooks at Scribd.

There are also many online options; for example online permaculture training resources such as Permalearners – Permaculture Action Learning (UK) Online.

Transition towns

The transition movement is developing in most English-speaking countries. This web page explains how to get involved with transition towns in the UK.

For existing transition networks in other countries, try doing a Google search.

Post-carbon

Post-carbon cities are aimed more at local government, whereas transition towns are a grassroots movement. Information about post-carbon cities can be found on the Post Carbon Cities website.

Geoengineering

The first step is to join the geoengineering Googlegroup mentioned previously, and/or read up on the materials in this unit. Then simply choose the way you want to be involved. This could be through joining discussions on ethics or through becoming knowledgeable about one particular option, either from a critical perspective or from a supportive one.

Geonurturing

I have offered my definition of geonurturing in this unit. You are welcome to start an online discussion group or develop the concept in any way you choose. Groups that are clearly involved in geonurturing include conservation organisations, permaculture groups and the Global Cooling Project. Another useful online resource is Wetlands International.

Communication and decision-making systems

In all of these movements, good communication and decision-making systems are helpful. The following resources may help you in these areas:

Nonviolent communication websites

• The Center for Nonviolent Communication

• NVC UK Infopoint

• Puddledancer Press

Sociocracy and participatory websites

• Participatory rural appraisal

• Sociocracy

Acknowledgements

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Text

Unit authored by Ray Taylor

Unit image

Getty photodisc

Links

All links accessed 27 November 2009.