GJEP ally Oliver Munnion recently launched a newsletter for GeoEngineeringMonitor.org, a website that “aims to be a timely source for information and critical perspectives on climate engineering. Our goal is to serve as a resource for people around the world who are opposing climate geoengineering and fighting to address the root causes of climate change instead.”
Munion is the co-Director of Biofuelwatch and member of the Coal Action Network, a UK-based campaign group focusing on the impacts of the UK’s coal industry. He has been campaigning on energy issues in the UK for the last 10 years, with a particular focus on opencast mining and large-scale biomass.
Here is an excerpt from the website titled, “What is GeoEngineering?”
Climate geoengineering refers to large-scale schemes for intervention in the earth’s oceans, soils and atmosphere with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change, usually temporarily. It includes a wide array of techniques centred around blocking sunlight or reflecting it back into space, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or allowing heat to escape into space.
Geoengineering schemes do not attempt to address the root causes of climate change driven by greenhouse gas emissions. Many geoengineering proposals also do not address other major issues such as pollution, ecological destruction from extreme fossil fuel extraction or ocean acidification. Instead, each one is an attempt to address principally one effect of climate change – global increase in temperature – through additional large-scale changes to the atmosphere, oceans, lands, or even outer space.
Because climate geoengineering proposals represent the intentional efforts to change the climate on a global scale, it’s crucial to gather as much information as possible about the risks and potential effects of these techniques.
