This weekend, I finally saw “Interstellar.” It was an enthralling, imaginative and thought-provoking film with eye-popping cinematography and tear-jerking examinations of love and relationships. I would highly recommend the movie. That said, I completely disagree with the film’s fundamental premise. I am not one to critique works of entertainment for their social implications or philosophical content, but I fear the attitude toward our planet as presented in “Interstellar” reflects the actual beliefs of a growing portion of the population. Namely, the idea that human ingenuity, coupled with wild risk-taking, will suffice to solve our climate problems.
Geoengineering describes deliberate, large-scale attempts to alter the climate system in order to reverse, or at least mitigate, the consequences of global warming. The most notorious example of geoengineering is sulphur spraying in the upper atmosphere. A swelling assemblage of scientists, funded by billionaire investors such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, have concocted a scheme to spray sulphur dioxide particulates in the atmosphere in order to reflect incoming solar radiation and thus cool the planet.
Critics have argued that this tactic would be far more devastating than beneficial. It could severely disrupt global rainfall patterns and induce droughts in Africa and India, potentially robbing 1.2 to 4.1 billion people of life-sustaining rain. If atmospheric sulphur fails to arrest rain all together, it might cause lethal acid rainfall. Additionally, while it could cool the planet, it would not address the root cause of global warming — the excess accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere. At best, this feat of geoengineering would delay the inevitable consequences of climate change, and at worst it would create a plethora of new, irreversible problems for the planet.
Yet proponents of sulphur spraying maintain that if we cannot halt our global carbon emissions, then we are going to need a “Plan B” capable of preserving at least a small slice of humanity. This mentality is eerily similar to that of the pessimistic scientists in “Interstellar.” The idea that the majority of humanity could be justifiably endangered or even sacrificed to save the species is unsettling, to the say the least. Is this what our push for sustainability and, ultimately, survival has come to? Are we as a society willing to gamble our planet in a desperate, last-ditch effort to preserve the ways of life that have created the very problem with which we are now confronted?
There is not going to be a silver bullet solution to climate change that allows us to carry on with “business as usual.” We must recognize that we live within the complex, non-negotiable biological confines of a flexible but ultimately fragile environment. The web of life on earth, of which we are an inseparable element, has evolved over millions of years to thrive in a specific set of climatic circumstances. Human actions have drastically altered that delicate state at a historically unprecedented rate. Our technological achievements and advances over the past 200 years have been remarkable, but global warming is a severe, unintended consequence of our prolific progress. I do not believe this issue can be remedied by simply experimenting with more unsound, sci-fi inspired technology.
As Albert Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This rings especially true for the problem of climate change. We have come to expect quick fixes to complicated, multi-faceted issues. Too fat? Take a pill. Too sad? Take a pill. No idea where you are? There’s an app for that. However, our planet’s predicament requires serious introspection and an honest evaluation of how we are creating this issue and what steps we need to take to redress it, regardless of how difficult they might be.
We cannot adopt the attitude that the earth is merely a starting point in humankind’s intergalactic pursuit of perfection. We cannot continue to embrace the fantastic notion that human ingenuity can compensate for a lack of human discipline. At the end of the day, the issue of climate change is as much a moral dilemma as it is an intellectual obstacle. Accepting that there are certain things that we cannot, and should not, do — such as polluting our atmosphere with heinous amounts of carbon or sulphur — is not the mark of intellectual inferiority. On the contrary, I believe recognizing our inherent limitations and living within our means is the ultimate mark of human intelligence.