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Worldchanging Executive Editor Alex Steffen has become a respected voice of dissent in the global conversation about geo-engineering strategies. This fall, he re-enters the debate as part of the cast of front-line innovators featured in a new docu-style series from Discovery and Impossible Pictures. The program, called Discovery Project Earth, launches this Friday, August 22.

The series will profile some pretty extraordinary experiments aimed at slowing global warming, generating alternative energy and restoring natural resources. Cutting-edge thinkers around the world, including scientists, engineers and other innovators, stand at the helms of these most ambitious projects, which face no small amount of uncertainty in their quest to save all life on Earth.

Alex was tapped to comment specifically on several geo-engineering initiatives featured in Project Earth. These plans read like the scripts of science fiction movies, but they are being worked on right now, to address what is perhaps the biggest challenge the human race has ever confronted. According to a press release issued by Discovery Communications:

From covering acres of Greenland's glaciers in protective blankets to stop it from melting to constructing space rockets to send tiny reflective lenses into orbit to planting thousands of saplings via a mass aerial drop to reforest barren areas, these are experiments on an epic scale. Each one will push the boundaries of science and technology, but will they produce groundbreaking environmental results?

Make no mistake: we need thinkers who are willing to go beyond the norm; who are willing to imagine on an epic, legendary, mythological scale; who aim to be the heroes who preserve life on this planet.

But Worldchanging has always encouraged careful debate and long-term consideration when it comes to geo-engineering. Drastic measures that dramatically alter intricate systems and delicately balanced exchanges on the Earth, in our oceans, in our atmosphere and beyond are daunting, because altering the natural flow of ecosystems is how we created this disaster in the first place.

Whether or not you'll be tuning in to Project Earth, we've put together a gallery of Worldchanging's past coverage of geo-engineering. We hope that this modest anthology will help those who would like to follow the debate and our role in it, and to help many of you deepen your understanding of some of the most cutting edge, beyond-the-pale, and, we worry, the most dangerous ideas now in the arsenal for our fight against climate chaos.

And remember, Worldchanging is a discussion, not a lecture. Our readers are highly educated, engaged and concerned. So we strongly encourage you to read the comment threads for some lively debate.

How Do We Intelligently Discuss Politicized Geoengineering?
Posted by Alex Steffen on June 10, 2008

This is a dangerous moment, one where words count, and geoengineering is being used to very direct (and dishonest) rhetorical purposes. In a very real way, discussions of geoengineering play into the political hands of those in the U.S. who would like to see climate change action blocked.

But at the same time, in order to have a worthwhile discussion about how to confront climate change and other planetary problems, we need to acknowledge both the full extent of human influence on the Earth and the need for intelligent planetary managemet.

No Time For Singularity
Posted by Karl Schroeder on June 11, 2008

…This upward curve of technological development rides on something: it rides on the back of humanity, and we ride (largely for free, until now) on the back of the natural system that sustains us. Once serious environmental deterioration sets in, the curve of technological change will flatten, even if we develop 'godlike AIs,' for the simple reason that intelligence itself is not enough to sustain growth … If there's to be a miraculous transformation of human civilization, it has to be accomplished by us, right now, before we develop our miraculous nanobots, genetically engineered carbon-sucking trees, or polywell fusion reactors.

Planktos, Geo-Engineering and Politics
Posted by Alex Steffen on February 14, 2008

And here we are led to what may be to me the most damning shortcoming of geo-engineering: These proposals are not actually very smart or cutting edge. They are a set of 20th century proposals kitted out in 21st century drag. This is the response you'd get if you took a bunch of 1950s scientists with slide rules and crew cuts, put them in a room, and showed them An Inconvenient Truth. "First, we build a space mirror, then, if that doesn't work, we'll fall back to the artificial volcano... it may be a long shot, but nothing else will save the American way of life!"

GeoEngineering in the Anthropocene Era
Posted by Jon Lebkowsky on November 27, 2006

In his latest Viridian screed, WorldChanging ally Bruce Sterling refers to an article from Wired, "Rebooting the Ecosystem," which acknowledges that we humans have screwed up our planet, and this means we're responsible for repairing the damage, but stopgaps like carbon sequestration just aren't going to cut it.

Drastic Measures for Cooling the Planet
Posted by Sarah Rich on June 27, 2006

The approach raises serious ethical questions: what is the right way -- if there is one -- to massively alter or impose upon the natural world, with the guiding principles being averting climate disaster and saving the earth? … What it does lead us to, however, is the ever more widely accepted understanding that this crisis is real, it's massive, and it is indeed time to be thinking up solutions on a scale appropriate to the challenge.

Why Geo-Engineering is a Bad Fall-Back Strategy
Posted by Alex Steffen on March 10, 2006

Given our extremely limited understanding of (and thus ability to manage) the planet now, with more modest expectations and under comparatively stable conditions, debating geo-engineering may even provide a stalking horse for climate "skeptics"…

The Open Future: The Reversibility Principle
Posted by Jamais Cascio on March 6, 2006

It's likely that, should we be forced to consider such global-scale engineering to respond to climate disaster, few of the options will be reversible. The question then becomes which option -- including the option of doing nothing -- would in the worst reasonable scenarios result in the least amount of death and destruction, and which would give us the greatest opportunity for gradual mitigation of harm. Underlying the choices will be the need to make the ways the options as reversible as possible, even if full reversibility isn't plausible.

And our very first deep discussion on the topic was Jamais Cascio's four-part series, posted during the summer of 2005:

Terraforming Earth

Terraforming Earth, Part II

Terraforming Earth, Part III: Geoethical Principles

Terraforming Earth IV: The Question of Methane

I say this to preface a look at a set of proposed feats of ecological engineering on a scale never before attempted intentionally. They may not be the best courses of action -- they may not be wise, or evince a good balance of benefit and risk -- but we should not rule them out simply because they involve making big changes to the environment. We're already making big changes, only without any foresight or design; to paraphrase Stewart Brand's 1968 epigram, we are already terraforming Earth, and might as well get good at it.

Image credit: flickr/Dead Air, licensed by Creative Commons.
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(Posted by Julia Steinberger in Features at 5:20 PM)