A little-known Texas congressman has proposed de-orbiting the moon to cool down global warming. This zany proposal comes at a time when improbable geo-engineering projects are making a comeback.
Congressman for Texas’1st district since 2005, Louie Gohmert has everything to dislike. A Trump-leaning Republican, this former military lawyer is naturally opposed to abortion, the strengthening of LGBT rights, the repression of hate crimes and the Black Lives Matter movement.
A staunch defender of the right to bear arms, this son of an architect is proposing that teachers be allowed to come to class armed, to reduce the risk of mass killings in schools. Elected in an oil-rich region, Louie Gohmert sides with the oil industry. An ecological choice. After all, he says, pipelines encourage sexual activity in … caribou.
Toxic Texan
A born provocateur, the former captain criticizes the encyclical Laudato si’. Of course: the papal text is based on “false science”. “The Pope was persuaded that climate change is a phenomenon that significantly affects the planet”, says the man who, like Galileo before him, “questions” scientific dogma.
However, this new toxic Texan seems to have evolved of late. While he still downplays its anthropogenic origin, the Republican congressman no longer disputes the existence of climate change. He even wonders how to offset its effects.
Modifying the moon’s orbit
Last June, during a hearing with the head of the Federal Forestry Service, the parliamentarian wondered about the best way to cool down global warming. One idea came to mind: “change the course of the moon around the earth”. The proposal left the civil servant speechless. Seemingly innocuous, the remark makes perfect sense in the current context.
Many American multinationals are taking steps to reduce their impact on the climate. From Microsoft to BlackRock, Wallmart to Apple, they are (almost) all aiming for carbon neutrality.
CO2 extraction
Technophiles, US bosses have a thing for the craziest and cheapest solutions. United Airlines has just signed an unprecedented agreement with Carbon Engineering (CE). This Canadian company will build an installation capable of capturing as much carbon dioxide from the air as will be released by the planes of the world’s largest airline. While this will balance out the airline’s carbon footprint, it will also help the climate. For the carbon dioxide sucked in by CE will be resold to an oil company to boost production from its oil and gas wells.
As the effects of global warming are felt more and more, the temptation to combat them by modifying the major bio-geo-chemical cycles is growing. Last March, the U.S. Academy of Sciences recommended funding research to send some of the sun’s rays back into space. For many years, Harvard scientists have been fine-tuning a high-altitude sulfate misting device. Again, to cool global warming.
Dangerous temptation
Popularized by the blockbuster Geostorm, geo-engineering has a bad reputation. While it has the potential (on paper) to cool the globe, it has yet to prove its ability to cool all regions of the planet equally. A cooled India next to an overheated Pakistan: you can imagine the result of inequitable air-conditioning.
Moreover, cooling global warming without reducingCO2 emissions will have no effect on the ongoing acidification of the oceans, a potentially devastating phenomenon for marine biodiversity. Geoengineering also raises formidable ethical questions: who controls the system, what is the economics, what happens if a country can no longer pay, who is the regulator?
The good thing about Louie Gohmert’s ravings is that they bring back into the public debate a subject that society is far from having settled.
