Perspective: Mitigating climate crisisCan We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?
The Climate Apocalypse is upon us. More carbon monoxide has been discharged into the atmosphere in the last 50 years than in the whole of human history that went before. Carbon traps heat and the world is getting hotter. Heat holds water vapor and so rainfall is getting more frequent while heat waves last longer. Ice at the poles melts and coastal cities face inundation as sea levels rise. The doom confidently predicted by many climate scientists around the world is being met by optimism among other scientists who are employing innovative technologies that may transform the debate and offer hope for us all. These technological breakthroughs will impact all aspects of climate change from carbon emissions to food production and all forms of energy.
The Climate Apocalypse is upon us. More carbon monoxide has been discharged into the atmosphere in the last 50 years than in the whole of human history that went before. Carbon traps heat and the world is getting hotter. Heat holds water vapor and so rainfall is getting more frequent while heat waves last longer. Ice at the poles melts and coastal cities face inundation as sea levels rise.
James Adams, writing in The Spectator, argues that the doom confidently predicted by many climate scientists around the world is being met by optimism among other scientists who are employing innovative technologies that may transform the debate and offer hope for us all. These technological breakthroughs will impact all aspects of climate change from carbon emissions to food production and all forms of energy.
“A number of companies are working on creating artificial life and expect to reach a breakthrough at the cellular level within three years,” he writes. “Imagine, then, a cloud several miles wide of artificial cells floating through the atmosphere programmed to find carbon and devour it. Sound impossible? Maybe but a combination of artificial intelligence and biotechnology may offer exactly that solution.”
Adams offers examples of innovative technologies and approaches which, if successful, would help reduce the impact of climate change. He concludes:
What is striking about all these developments is that they are driven not so much by idealism (please do this to save the world) but rather by simple economics. All the really promising solutions have a cost benefit to the producer as well as the manufacturer and so there are real incentives to adopt answers that improve yields, reduce costs and increase margins – all while saving the planet.
The more alarmist of the climate change lobby would suggest that the world really is coming to an end. What that argument misses is that there are hundreds of changes in technology that are either in the works or that have already come out of the lab. Each breakthrough is not a complete answer to the climate challenge but, taken together, there is real hope.
