Scientists have begun to hedge their bets and not count on society decarbonizing in time to avoid disruption to the Earth's climate system. Even if the dreams of the Paris Agreement are fully realized, the planet may become uncomfortably warm in the near term, bringing severe conditions. Consider current events. Houston has been hit with two 500-year rainstorms this decade alone. The American West has turned into a tinderbox, with water running out and wildfires devastating populated areas every summer. Miami along with a lot of the rest of southern Florida is slowly slipping into the sea. Russian cargo ships are sailing from Vladivostok to Europe by way of an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Enter a once-taboo topic shunned by greens and governments alike — geoengineering, a suite of technological remedies to solve the climate crisis or at least buy humanity more time to rid our energy and agricultural systems of greenhouse gas emissions. AT&T's Braden Allenby wrote about such intervention in these pages 18 years ago. In "Global Warning," he declared that international efforts at emissions abatement were doomed to failure and that "society should actively manage the entire carbon cycle, using a broad array of technologies and policies to achieve climate stabilization." What seemed like science fiction then has become today's unfortunate reality.
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