Lighting is not like many other electric gadgets we can do without, lighting is essential to our well-being and ability to see well. The quality, quantity, placement and direction of light sources in our homes can greatly influence our mood and ability to relax, readn or do various chores. Like you, I like having many options to play with, but with part of the palette banned (sorry, phased-out), that definitely puts limits to what can be done lightwise and I foresee a very cold and depressing future without incandescent light.

There is currently on the market NO replacement for the incandescent bulb other than halogen energy savers for those of us who prefer a warmwhite, fire-based, dimmable, instnant-on, mercury-free, accurately colour rendering, top quality light in our homes – and most of those will be phased out too, both in the U.S. and EU.

What we will be left with is a cold, gloomy, unnatural, non-sparkling, slowly fading, colour-warping, dead CHEMICAL light, of which CFLs contain harmful mercury and phosphors, and LED/OLEDs various rare earths (some toxic) of which there may not exist enough to sustain the lighting needs of a whole planet.

I’ve always been puzzled as to how environmentalists can support such a switch instead of focusing on switching to more efficient energy sources.

And the Jevons effect is very real. CFLs are even recommended to leave on for at least 15 minutes up to 3 hours in order not to drastically shorten their life. And when I switched one one of my incandescent bulbs to an RGB LED, I notice a tendency to not feel so bad about leaving it on “since it uses so little anyway”.

The defects that you note seem representative of the general confusion of the journalists in question.

which anti-science movement?

quite an impressive list… also a tad selective, methinks

Gosh, if I believed in the anti-science movement (and I really don’t), this might make me suspect that the arguments against geo-engineering of any kind were often weighted more toward premise than conclusion.

Indeed, a number of committed climate activists have told me flat-out that they think achieving such a cut is impossible, but that they also believe in the 350 target.

Cheers for your list. It reads a like a fairly grudging presentation of why opponents of geo-engineering are as alarmed as we are at the rising prominence of the field. Allow me to add a few comments as one of those true non-believers:

1. “Geoengineering adds to climate risks unconscionably”. Well – not just climate risks…. The missing point is that there are also other environmental and social risks. We are facing multiple planetary crises with similar systemic roots. Any real ’solution’ has to not only stabilize the climate and other planetary cycles (water, nitrogen etc) and make energetic sense but it must at the very least take into account other related crises: loss of biodiversity, the growing inequality between rich and poor, the erosion of cultures, sovereignty and human rights, declining access to clean water and health care , the expansion of landlessness, rising food insecurity just for starters. Climate change is serious but only the latest in a line of serious problems that can’t be dealt with one at a time. Two thirds of the global population was already living in a state of everyday crisis before atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases reached today’s alarming levels and if a ‘geo-engineering solution’ worsens their lives to protect the comfortable lives of the better-off, than that is also unconscionable.

And yes, I know that a worsening climate situation also worsens these other problems but there is no rational basis for allowing climate change to trump all of these other co-existing problems.

2. “It is reasonable to distrust a priori the motives of anyone who tries to argue for any approach to global warming other than emissions reduction”. The key here is naivete. I don’t — always — distrust the motives of those who want a research programme on geoengineering, but I sometimes do distrust their political judgment. It seems to me the pro-geoengineering camp is becoming an unholy alliance (marriage of convenience?) between honestly concerned climate scientists experiencing understandable levels of panic and industrial, financial and political interests spotting another useful diversionary strategy to further derail global agreements and a way to keep what they consider to be their fair share of the pie. I tend to find the latter camp more politically astute (and yes I do distrust their motives and ideological biases) and the former camp sincere but naive about power and politics in climbing into bed with these sorts of agendas. It is astonishingly naïve to think that politicians who have failed to deliver on mitigation targets will not jump at the opportunity for a “techno-fix”, however sketchy, that appears to let them off the hook until the next election. The problem is not mainly what peoples motives are, but what the effects of their actions are.

Arguments 3 and 4 – I think you are right here and I appreciate the recognition of sincerity but the tone is a tad patronizing given that the arguments have not been refuted. Argument 4 is particularly relevant with regards to SRM technologies, which essentially mask rather than reduce high concentrations of GHGs.

5. “The second moral argument: the purpose of environmental action is to restore nature.” There is a corollary to this which is a historically-derived distrust of techno-science and scientific hubris. After generations of technological panaceas that turned into environmental and social disasters (think DDT, thalidomide, Chernobyl, dioxin poisoning, hormone disruption, the Green Revolution, antibiotic overuse, CFC’s) people are understandably skeptical of new planet-altering schemes. Why let techno-science move on to even riskier “solutions” when we know that underlying scientific knowledge, especially related to climate, is hugely incomplete? “Nature knows best” therefore is not so much romantic folklore of a pre-industrial Golden Age as choosing historically tested circumstances for guidance on what is safe. Its roughly the same reason James Hanson chooses 350 ppm as an appropriate threshold for atmospheric carbon – we’ve been there before and we know what it looks like. There are also good scientific reasons for prioritising the protection of intact ecosystems for their resilience and ability to adapt as well as effective carbon sinks.

“One could be opposed to any technology that centralized power as much as some geoengineering technologies might do”. This is key, — not an afterthought. By definition, geoengineering has to put a large amount of technological power in the hands of whoever is deploying the technology (the “who has their hands on the thermostat’ question). Global decision-making processes overwhelmingly favour the already powerful (OECD and industrial interests) and they will control the technology and its deployment. While timid noises are being made about the need for an international discussion on governance of geoengineering, that discussion is moving far slower than the technology itself. Global discussions should, logically, proceed it. ,Geoengineering will further remove power from those who have historically contributed little to the problem and who are already suffering the most impacts. It’s also why militarization of geoengineering (or at least its geopolitical ramifications) looms large as a concern.

A further source of opposition is that geoengineering is being advanced as part of a package of market-based responses to climate change that have so far proved socially and ecologically damaging, inequitable and completely ineffective at limiting greenhouse gas concentrations (offsets, biofuels, carbon trade). The widespread opposition to recent ocean fertilization schemes has in large part been fuelled by the presence of for-profit companies such as Climos and Planktos looking to get rich quick out of the climate change crisis. Both new technologies and crises situations alike (war, poverty, environmental degradation) always attract profiteers who misrepresent and oversell for their own financial ends. Its a good way to make a quick buck and a terrible way to save the world.

So to summarize, reasons to oppose geoengineering include:

-Geoengineering falsely isolates the climate problem from other related crisis and is therefore an inadequate response with potentially devastating social and ecological consequences.

-Geoengineers largely appear either politically naïve or tied to interests with a strong stake in maintaining the economic status quo (which we would regard as highly inequitable).

-Geoengineering leads us into a high-risk engineered world with unpredictable consequences and vulnerabilities rather than building resilience of existing ecosystems.

– Countless previous risky technologies overpromised as panaceas have been unleashed onto society and the biosphere without adequate risk assessment and incomplete scientific knowledge and proved damaging to the common good. Geoengineering seems firmly in that inglorious tradition.

-Geoengineering is seen as a centralized technology facilitating greater concentration of economic and technological power in the hands of those who already unfairly wield power – eg strengthening OECD states and further disempowering developing countries.

- Geoengineering can be developed and deployed absent of multilateral agreement and potentially for military or geopolitical advantage. An international discussion regarding governance and regulation of geoengineering should precede further research and development and should be an absolute pre-condition to developing the technologies.

-Geoengineering is seen as another market-based mechanism, driven by short term profiteers, that will deliver inequitable outcomes and no real results.