The point is we don’t have time anymore to address the root causes. If we had started decades ago, maybe we wouldn’t have needed solar modification. But now we’re just still playing pretend that we can solve this via CO2 cuts alone.

Here’s the problem. It takes decades to ramp up the industry and infrastructure necessary to move everything away from fossil fuels. There are hard requirements on material extraction that just can’t be popped up overnight. This isn’t software engineering; this is real physical industry and production. We are currently in the middle of an energy transition. But it’s going to take decades. If we just shut off that tap for fossil fuels tomorrow, billions of people would die from the fallout. We’re talking about completely rebuilding an infrastructure that we’ve spent the last two centuries constructing. We need to do all of this, while also having our production and construction sectors strained from all the adaptation we need to do to deal with the fallout of the warming climate!

It’s just magical thinking. It’s letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Yes, I wish we could waive a magic wand and make oil go away overnight. But this is a 50 year project ahead of us, and we are already completely out of time. We’ve already passed +1.5C, and things are rapidly spiraling out of control.

I don’t give a shit if this is the perfect solution. I don’t care if it has downside risks. And I know full well the types of risks you’re talking about. But frankly, we just don’t have the luxury of worrying about those right now. Again, we are out of time. You’ll be smuggly patting yourself on the back, congratulating that you avoided the Futurama scenario, thankful that we never played God…as the last coral reef dies and the Amazon is a distant memory. The biosphere will be wrecked beyond repair, but at least we never got caught in that cloud seeding trap!