A climate-crisis book which delivers a rich, in depth history of climate change and the science and politics that underpin it, offering a new – and controversial – response: geoengineering.
Despite the on-going political debate, carbon dioxide emissions are rising even faster and new scientific research suggests that no feasible reduction can now effectively mitigate climate change. With limited time for action, an increasingly influential minority of climate scientists are exploring the possibility of human intervention in the biosphere to slow or prevent further warming: a stratospheric veil against the sun, the cultivation of photosynthetic plankton, a fleet of unmanned ships seeding clouds.
The Planet Remade explores the science, history and politics behind these radical strategies and why we might want to use geo-engineering techniques as well as why others so passionately oppose them. With sensitivity, insight and expert science, Oliver Morton unpicks the moral implications of our responses to climate change, our fear that people have become a force of nature and the potential for good in holding such power.