After Geoengineering

by Holly Jean Buck

  “Mm-hmm,” you say. “Thank god the ag companies invested in climate change–resistant coffee strains.” You have that feeling you get when it is late in the morning and you haven’t accomplished very much yet.

  “There was also the successful push toward carbon capture and storage. Back in 2017, they had only twenty-some CCS plants. But in 2020, with the global initiative on negative emissions, countries were putting in CCS facilities all over the place—and now there are over 2,000. In just a few decades.”

  “That’s great,” you say.

  “The article is pretty techno-focused. It was really the social movements that created the push to hold the fossil fuel companies accountable, and that changed the narrative. I mean, when we were teenagers, everything was so apocalyptic. It was like some new climate disaster was in the air every day. Our kid isn’t even going to know what that’s like.”

  Turn to page 24.

  You roll over in bed, throw off the faded sheet, and think about sitting up. Your kid is still asleep. Thank god. You ask: “Alexa, what do I need to know?”

  “It’s six twenty-three. Would you like your headlines?”

  “Sure,” you say.

  “A new paper in Science indicates that the world has warmed two degrees since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This threshold was crossed on the heels of the ongoing water emergency in Yemen. Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives is voting today on whether to join other countries in a geoengineering accord. Would you like to hear more of the story?”

  “Sure,” you say, pulling on your socks.

  “While emissions have slightly decreased in several regions, including the United States and China, they are still rising rapidly in other parts of the world. There’s disagreement around whether or not emissions have plateaued, and whether we are headed for 4°C of warming by the end of the century.”

  “The geoengineering accord would establish an international cost-sharing agreement and insurance scheme that pools international resources for the deployment of stratospheric aerosols. Florida senator Jackie Gonzalez has been the first to speak out in favor of the accord. ‘If the melting of Greenland continues, Miami will be completely inundated in a few decades. It’s already impossible to insure the property along our coasts. The world has offered us a reasonable path to salvation, one that will be mutually beneficial for coastal cities all around the world. This accord could preserve geopolitical stability abroad as well as protect our homeland.’ However, several key members of the US Congress have remained silent. We can expect the results to be challenged in the courts either way.”

  You head for the kitchen table and pick up your tablet, even though you’ve made a resolution not to look at it first thing in the morning anymore—anyway, it’s not really first thing if you’re out of bed. You have three notifications from friends, all auto-sent from an environmental NGO, asking you to call your representatives to protest the geoengineering accord. We need polluters to pay for climate cleanup—not new risks for ourselves and our kids. The photo of the smiling family looks like it could have been shot in your neighborhood. Sigh—the email is one of those that is custom-tailored based on your social media profile, which means there’ll be nostalgic nods to the protest activities of your teenage years, too, and pictures of your younger self. Remember when you marched on Washington for climate justice in ’27? Now that you’re a parent, you’ve got even more to fight for! Put fossil fuels out of business. Stop solar geoengineering NOW!

  If you choose to call your representatives in protest, flip a coin. Heads: turn to page 12; tails: turn to page 13.

  If you think the geoengineering accord sounds like a pretty good option, turn to page 15.

  2050s

  You take your sandwich out of its wrapper: a few slices of cultivated meat and a flat tomato from your building’s greenhouse.

  You stay inside for lunch. A few die-hard coworkers are eating on the benches outside, but they’re going to return to the office drenched in sweat. The downside of your choice is that there is a TV blaring. Today’s lunchtime news talk show is about negative emissions.

  “Whose negative emissions are these, really?” asks the moderator. “The ecologist from Nature Conservation says that they’re her negative emissions, because she’s worked with landowners in Iowa for over a decade to remove this carbon. But it seems like you, Ron, are saying that they’re your negative emissions—that her work happens so that you at LowC Fuels can produce more fuel.”

  “In a sense, yes. But we’re doing this in service of society.” Ron leans back in his chair. “Look, Jim, these negative emissions can’t belong to anyone, because by definition they don’t exist. They’re negative. And it’s our job to keep these airplanes flying. That means we have to emit a little, and remove a little.”

  The ecologist cuts in. “Well, I didn’t spend my career in the fields, teaming up with hardworking ranchers to reform farm practices, so that you could continue to pile up profits. Not after your industry spent decades obscuring the very existence of climate change.”

  So far, the on-screen needle recording audience sentiment has favored the energy spokesperson, who has taken up the voice of sensibility; but now it begins to tilt in favor of the ecologist. You pull out your phone to send in your sentiment. You get distracted by images of drowned refugee corpses in the Mediterranean, and then by the liquid eyes of a now-extinct species of forest mouse. It’s a good thing climate sensitivity turned out to be low and those Antarctic glaciers have been so hardy, you think, polishing off your minimal sandwich.

  Turn to page 24.

  You eat your sandwich at your desk. Your terminal is monitoring you to make sure you eat your sandwich in a reasonable amount of time.

  It is the anniversary of your child’s death. On your desk is a picture of her, standing on the shore, clutching a red balloon. It was taken before the hurricane hit.

  You see her when she had dengue fever. Waiting in the hospital lines, sleeping in your arms, breathing hard. You should have done something more. Your chatbot therapist tells you these thoughts are unhelpful, but you can’t exorcise them.

  You crumple up the wrapper from your sandwich and sweep the crumbs into the trash. The face of your chatbot therapist appears on the screen. “Good afternoon. It looks like your blood pressure has risen somewhat. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Must be a nanosensor glitch.”

  She blinks at you, slowly. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I’m just thinking that we should have done something more.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. Can you tell me more?”

  “I mean, we should have stopped the decline before it got this bad and everyone started dying all around us.”

  “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  “That’s what you always say, CB. You should try to mix it up.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your suggestion. I’ve noted your response.” The therapist blinks again, attentively. You’ve observed that she is programmed with at least six types of blinks. “You know, a lot of other people are feeling bad about climate change too. Thirty-six percent of them have talked with me this week about climate change.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe it would help to go to the exercise room and video chat with one of them.”

  You sigh. Once the therapist suggests this, you normally have to do it, because they notice if you ignore the suggestion too often. “I just feel like if there was anything I could do to stop it, I would. To put things back.”

  “There wasn’t anything that anyone could have done. At the climate emergency summit in 2048, all the options were reviewed. Climate sensitivity was high. Last-ditch options like solar geoengineering were found to be too risky and contentious. The best we can do is keep on going. Your loved ones would want that.”

  “Nobody wanted the liability,” you mutter. “Bunch of cowards. Fuck it. I’m going to the exercise room.”

  Your therapist
brightens her concerned eyes and blinks energetically. “Good idea!”

  Turn to page 24.

  You’re in the doctor’s waiting room. On screen, the first planes are going up. No one is paying attention; everyone’s kids are miserable. Your child’s breathing is slow and heavy. She won’t even take a bite of the sandwich you made her.

  The screen cuts to a reporter on a college campus: buildings of steel and glass, upon a patch of brown, withered grass. “The provisions in the accord say that we have to stick to the schedule for drawing down carbon, or we’ll be stuck with this forever. Let’s hear the word on the street.”

  She turns to two young men. “This is Dave and Jason. Guys, the geoengineering program starting today says that your generation, and your kids’ generation, are going to be responsible not just for cutting carbon emissions, but for engaging in carbon management.”

  “Carbon management? Is that a major? I’m here for virtual game design,” one boy says.

  His friend shakes his head. “Come on. Carbon management is, like, waste management. Sure. Why not?”

  The reporter nods. “We’re talking about using even more technologies that remove carbon, because if we don’t, we’ll have to keep up the solar geoengineering forever. What do you think?”

  “If you can make it a game, I’m in,” the first boy says, smiling to the camera and the interviewer.

  His friend pauses. “I think it sounds like a lot of responsibility, and, you know, they’re leaving us with a lot of debt and not much social security. Like my mom was supposed to be getting social security, but it ran out, so she has to live with my sister. When I finish school, it’ll be my turn to take her in, and I gotta find a place with two whole rooms that I can afford. So I don’t know how we’re supposed to have the resources to manage all this carbon and stuff. We can’t even get good jobs. Our parents don’t even have houses. So I don’t know about that.

  You turn away, stroke your fevered kid’s damp hair.

  If you think that the world is finally going to draw down the carbon, continue on the following page.

  If you’re not sure it will, turn to page 19 or 22.

  2070s

  “No more stories,” you tell your grandson and granddaughter. “It’s really time for bed.”

  “I want to hear ‘Amelia and the Carbon Monster’ next,” your grandson insists, struggling with his purple pajamas.

  “Okay, just one more story.” You settle onto the pillows and the children clamber around you, all limbs and angles. “Amelia and the Carbon Monster,” you announce, taking a deep breath.

  “Amelia was walking to school one day when she found a box on the sidewalk. She opened up the box, and there was a pair of magic glasses!” You have read this story so many times you could sleepwalk through it: Amelia, with her magic glasses, can see the invisible carbon monster. Amelia pulls together her team of Special Investigators. They devise all these ways to dissolve the carbon monster: they plant the 10 billion trees, build the beautiful new cities from special wood, and design the machines that take carbon out of the air and put it deep underground. Meanwhile, the Scientific Committee builds the Stratospheric Shield, so that the team has time to do their work.

  “By the time they were finished, they were old, and the playground where they used to meet had become a meadow. Amelia took out her magic glasses and looked around. The trees and dirt and plants and buildings were all filled up with carbon, glowing with a soft light. The end.” You close the book. Your feet have fallen asleep, and your grandson has a glassy-eyed look.

  Your granddaughter still looks somewhat alert. “That’s not a true story, is it?”

  “It’s not exactly true. But it’s true in spirit,” you say.

  “How can carbon be a monster if it’s everywhere?”

  “Well, carbon’s not a monster. The people who wanted to burn too much of it and get rich were kind of like monsters. The point of the book is the teamwork that had to go into cleaning up the carbon pollution. Even though it’s not all cleaned up yet, we’re halfway there. Pretty soon we might be able to take down the Stratospheric Shield.”

  “I don’t like cleaning up.”

  “Yeah. But this is about changing your attitude. Cleaning up can be really fun, if you do it with your friends,” you explain. “You know when you do cleanup time at school, and it’s like a race? It can be like that. You were really my little cleanup helper when you were two.”

  Your granddaughter has lost interest. “I want to play with my mini forest now.”

  “No,” you say, “it’s time for bed.” They will sleep well.

  Turn to page 24.

  You’re getting ready for bed when there’s a knock on your door. You tap on the wall to call up video from the hall: a professional-looking duo in bright sky-blue suits. They can’t be Mormons, you think, with suits that color.

  “Good evening!” They are beaming. “We’re sorry to stop by so late,” the woman apologizes, “but this was predicted to be a good time.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re with a group called Blue Sky Again. Do you remember the color the sky used to be when you were a kid?”

  “Sure I do. But how would you? You’re too young.”

  “We didn’t grow up with true-blue skies,” the man says. “But I got the blue sunglasses when they came out. We try to connect with people who do remember, and we’d like to give you some information about how you can help.”

  You sigh.

  “You probably remember when the planes started going up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, maybe you also remember the great enthusiasm for carbon removal around the time of the accord.”

  “Sure, the planes were supposed to be temporary until we got the carbon out. That was the line. The world cut emissions by half, and decided that was good enough, I guess.” Your legs ache from the exercise machine and you begin to wonder if you should have opened the door.

  “Well, we think that’s a crime. I see on the wall you have some pictures of little ones—grandkids? We think they should be able to see blue skies, too. We might never be able to, but they should. So we need to finish the job.”

  You laugh. “That’s a very laudable cause for you to spend your evenings on. But why would people start on carbon removal again? And how?”

  “I’m glad you asked the ‘how’ question. Our five-point plan, FINISH, answers that. We can project it on the wall.”

  Bullet points appear beside your door. “The first step is Fund. They skipped this fifty years ago, so they never even got to the next steps. But now we have the Machine Labor Act. You’re familiar with that?”

  “Well, I think so. Companies that automate have to put revenue into the Universal Basic Income program, proportional to how many jobs they automated. In order to spread the benefits of automation around a bit more.”

  “Yes. We want to use that same model for funding further carbon removal. We can’t tax only the energy companies who combusted fossil fuels; after all, they’re the ones now providing our low-carbon fuels and carbon storage, and we need them to continue operating. But we do have a lot of wealth that was created in the tech sector during this century. What we’re proposing to do is to add a small additional tax on that wealth. It will hurt the bottom lines of the old mega-platforms, the old Apple-Amazon-Alphabets. But not too much—and many of these companies will get it back, if they choose to participate in carbon removal activities. They get a nanobonus for each ton removed. That’s our second step: Incentivize.”

  “I’m not sure how any of the mega-platforms are really going to remove carbon themselves, though.”

  “We know you grew up thinking of these as technology companies. But they’ve moved into transport, building, manufacturing, and all other sectors—you can see on this chart that these top four companies and their subsidiaries are responsible for a huge share of energy consumption. So there’s a lot they can do, and they’re the ones that have
the revenue to fund carbon-negative infrastructure.”

  You feel like you’ve been standing in your doorway for a very long time.

  “So, it’s Fund, Incentivize—those two happen at the national scale. Then, to take this global, we need Negotiate, Inspire, and Show Heart. Negotiation will work if we inspire other countries with our model and build goodwill. It’s really our responsibility to make the first move. So, Negotiate, Inspire, and Show Heart. That final step is really important. The reason this didn’t work before is because it was technocratic, and unemotional. But the human heart is really at the core of Blue Sky Again.”

  “I’m not sure what I can do about all of this,” you tell her. “Honestly, I was just getting ready for bed…”

  “It’s that first step, Fund, that needs your help. These companies aren’t going to fund the removal projects unless citizens speak out and show your demand for this. So we’re asking you to join the movement. There are three concrete things you can do: you can talk with your elected representatives, share the key messages of FINISH, and vote.”

  You sigh. “I did all those things fifty years ago, and it didn’t do a damn thing. And it would have been so much easier to fix then, before we’d put another several hundred gigatons in. We’re addicted to these particles now.” They both look a bit crestfallen. “I’m glad there’s young people like you who care. But honestly, the world just doesn’t work that way.”

  Turn to page 24.

  You’re crawling into bed and hear a distant blast; the windows vibrate. You get up and secure the sheeting taped over all the windows and doors. Then, you check your phone. There’s the alert: Residents within one hundred miles of Active Participation airstrips, shelter in place.

  Are you ok? It’s a message from your child, 3,000 miles away.

  Ok. Looks like I’ll be indoors for a while, you write back. You hope the winds are going out to sea.

  I wish you had evacuated and come over. You had considered it, but it would be a long journey for someone in your condition. It would also have exhausted the last of your savings, making you utterly dependent upon your child.