Land Use and Geo-Engineering - Introduction to Carbon Capture and Sequestration - page 520

geo-engineering experiment changes land use so as to accommodate a
world of 9 billion humans or more. Changes in land use are responsible
for 15% of the total greenhouse emissions, while the burning of fossil
fuels (along with the making of cement) accounts for the remaining 90%.
These “geo-engineering projects” supply the world population with food
and energy, with the consequence of emitting large amounts of CO 2 to
the atmosphere.
Modern geo-engineering aims to “reverse engineer” the negative
effects of the increasing CO 2 levels. The fi rst thing that comes to mind is
stopping, or even reversing, the negative impact of changes in land use.
To impact climate change this would need to be done on a very large
scale — one that would encompass most of the land that was changed
to provide food for an ever-increasing population in the fi rst place. Other
geo-engineering technologies that are currently being considered include
the creation of large-scale devices to refl ect a signifi cant fraction of
the sunlight reaching the earth and enhancing the uptake of CO 2 by the
ocean. At present none of these schemes is employed. In fact, most
ideas are in a very early stage of development and many are controver-
sial. A recent report of the Royal Society gives a good overview of the
status of the various projects [11.1]. The two key recommendations of
this report are:

• Parties should make increased efforts toward mitigating and adapting

to climate change, and in particular to agreeing to global emissions
reductions of at least 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 and more thereaf-
ter. Nothing now known about geo-engineering options gives any
reason to diminish these efforts.

• Further research and development of geo-engineering options should

be undertaken to investigate whether low-risk methods can be made
available if it becomes necessary to reduce the rate of warming in this
century. This should include appropriate observations, the develop-
ment and use of climate models, and carefully planned and executed
experiments.

Given the substantive infrastructure already in existence today that
creates CO 2 emissions (i.e., the fossil fuel industry and industrial scale
farming), geo-engineering will never be a sensible alternative to preventing
emissions. Geo-engineering is, however, the only “plan B” we have — and