ABSTRACT
The most pressing problem facing humanity is probably global climate change. Melting of glaciers and areas under permafrost, rising sea levels, global warming from greenhouse gas emissions, and extreme weather events are among the many interdependent manifestations of a changed climate. As outlined in Chapter 10, climate change is difficult for us to grasp. After a many-year process of improving our understanding of the climate system, how we humans have affected it, and after complex negotiations the international community reached an agreement on climate in Paris in 2015. Keeping global warming at 2°C or even below has become the global imperative to prevent drastic change to the Earth system. Meeting this target requires radical transformation inter alia of our energy systems toward renewable sources of energy. The coming decades will show whether the knowledge compiled by the authoritative intergovernmental panel on climate change (the IPCC, a UN body) will translate into action as required or whether the lack of understanding and of political will impede a process that should prevent us from creating havoc to our environmental, economic and social systems and global security.
In an extension of what the authors consider the most complicated of current complexities, climate change, we emphasize some of the concrete approaches (as opposed to the moral and cultural justifications) for taking direct action to counter advancing disruptions of the global climate. They take a close look at the potential offered by the, thus far, hypothetical path called geoengineering. This would involve the shipping of special substances and equipment into near space, to “decarbonize” the atmosphere and/or to provide shielding against the sun’s hot rays. The notion is not sprung from the fiction of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells; it is based on the known results of space programs, UN-sponsored technical dialogue and persuasion, as well as ongoing efforts in applied science.
