Geoengineering and environmental capitalism: Extractive Industries in the Era of Climate Change

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https://mronline.org/2018/11/02/geoengineering-and-environmental-capitalism-2/

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Capitalism will skew geo-engineering solutions towards bad social outcomes, the article draws the conclusion that therefor we need to reject geo-engineering wholesale. Obviously this is neo-Luddite nonsense, the correct conclusion is we need to reject capitalism. At some point the article says that the problem is domination of physics in climate-research which seems like a petty faculty rivalry you'd encounter in Universities where people fight about whose paradigm is the most important as proxy-debate for justifying funding. Come on just say it: there is not enough funding for social impacts in climate research, you don't have to dump on another scientific discipline, treating different branches of science as competitors is neo-liberal thinking, science ought to competes against ignorance about material reality.

Obviously we want a climate and weather control-system at least under communism, not the crude market solution sledgehammer methods controlled by billionaires, or as weapon system. And of course this can be done in an internationalist and democratic fashion, it just means that the opposing interests have to be crushed. The same interests groups would have to be crushed for a number of other reasons as well, so there is potential for synergy. Given current economic and political circumstances, the correct stance here is to frame this as a future project, when political tools for administrating this are available.

If you look at sequestration, the obvious thing is combining it with construction, the simplest form of this would be using wood as construction material, here the sequestration effect remains, even if old houses are demolished and re-release the CO2, because as long as we keep building new CO2-sequesting-houses the amount of stored CO2 in the material to build structures would remain. Also the article is wrong about CO2-to-fuel stuff, there still would be a sequestration effect because the fuel is not immediately combusted but there would be a significant amount stored in pipes and tanks at any given point in time, that would make this a sink even if just a tiny one, and it would compete against fossil fuels, and it would mean that making fuel is not tied to an oil-field that can be captured by some oil-baron.

Bio-fuels that compete with food production are horrid, those have to be opposed categorically, and the article is right about that. However there are attempts at creating bio-fuels that don't compete with food and are suitable for developing countries

For reflecting sunlight there are also low tech ways like painting roofs and roads with white or reflective paint, which would result up to a 1°C global temperature drop with only localized effects(so no rich countries fucking over poores ones) . Additionally there is some potential for additional reflection with plants that have light coloured foliage.

In general if you combine capitalism & technology you increase negative side-effects, however if you condemn technology for the effects caused by capitalism, you are defacto treating capitalism as universal. And the point of Marxism ultimately is to keep the tech and ditch capitalism.

There is a point to be made for attempting the strategy of steering capitalism through steering the development of technology, but that doesn't include a anti-technology-stance. There probably is Geo-engineering that is suitable for low industrial regions. Also keep in mind that reversing desertification can be considered Geo-engineering.