Essay On Geoengineering

Climate change is real and it is happening fast. As Eli Kintisch, the author of Hack The Planet states, “the planet has warmed 1.4°F since the preindustrial times, with at least another 1.1°F in the pipeline, even if we were to stop our carbon diet cold, completely, today”. For this reason, scientists feel the need for a more radical action to stop a catastrophe. This new “radial action” is called geoengineering. The goal of geoengineering is to make large-interventions to how the planet works to help slow down or even reverse the damages that people have done. Although geoengineering can create negative impacts on the economy, it is an investment that would eventually save the planet and it will pay off in the future.

Geoengineering has been around for a while and it is now a hot topic between civilians and especially scientists. For some, geoengineering is the only chance that civilians have to stop global warming, but for others, geoengineering is not sustained economically because not even scientists are completely sure how disruptive global warming can be. The article “Geoengineering side effects could be potentially disastrous, research shows” published by The Guardian Weekly, states that even if geoengineering is used in its maximum capacity, it will be

Category five hurricanes like Katrina and Irma, heat waves in Pakistan, droughts in East Africa, and floods in South Asia are just glimpses of what the earth is expected to overcome. Just by taking a look at the damages that Katrina left behind, the Federal Emergency Road Maintenance Agency (FEMA) was able to come up with the total cost of the damage. “According to FEMA, the total damage for Katrina is estimated at $108 billion” (“Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts”). If geoengineering does not work, or if it the estimate ends up being less than expected, the economic cost of such disasters would destroy the economy