Thursday, December 20, 2018

Can geoengineering address climate change the way fracking reduced the energy crisis?

When I was in college, I thought, for sure, we were running out of oil. Pretty much everyone thought that with the gas lines and price hikes of the 1970s. I was looking forward to a future of bicycling and public transit. Liquid petroleum was running out and oil shale was expensive. Back then, they thought the shale would have to be dug up from mines, crushed and cooked. Gasoline prices would be through the roof and we'd have to go solar.

Little did I know that they found an answer. Fracking. Oil is now cheap, compared to the rest of the economy, but today's worry is global warming. There's still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, but carbon emissions are changing the climate.

As with the oil running out, it seems like an unsolvable problem, but maybe they will find another workaround? Geoengineering? Will we do something like put artificial sunshades above the earth? Solar energy is getting less expensive as well. Who knows.

Back in college, I was hoping the automobile would die along with it's highway traffic death toll of 30-40 thousand Americans per year. Little did I know that the self driving car would come to the rescue, or at least I hope it comes to the rescue. I'm almost always for accepting change.

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