Technology progresses, and the complex can quickly become all too easy and uniformly available. New complexities therefore are necessary in order to maintain the culture of cooperation and steady consumption.

And the climate may be the most complex of all products. It is a grand temptation. It is an ambition well-suited to the Leviathan.

And geo-engineering, properly marketed, one day (and sooner than you think) could be perceived to determine the life or death of a civilisation. The prospect of an eternity of nice days wrapped in a pretty bottle or, better yet, perched atop a white rocket that will be launched only after the final tender of payment? How much would one pay or give up for that? A tithe? Everything? A contract of indenture?

But it is exactly geoengineering schemes like GMOs that are leading us farther into the climate change abyss. Solving problems with the same solutions that created the problem is not the answer. Dr. Shiva as always is on the right side. Unfortunately as AsiaSuperLoop so eloquently stated, interests are already lining up to make sure global warming becomes so pronounced that geoengineering schemes will become "necessary." Bp is already involved in such schemes, which is why they are allowing the Gulf of Mexico to be used as a petrie dish. I have always stated that the governments of this world will never step up to the plate as they should regarding climate change because there is too much money to make out of not doing so, and we are seeing that false choice playing out more everyday.

Great post. A bit difficult to retrieve though. The geo-engineering bit comes from the last segment of the show, and you navigate there from the blurbs on the Democracy Now site.

My own view is that geo-engineering will become necessary and that it will be a privately managed exercise. The only firms on the planet with sufficient cash reserves to create a new distribution network for energy or for a climate engineering project that is global in scale are the supermajor oil companies. Hedge funds can't do it. Venture capital is puny compared to the supermajors. And government, in carbon trading, will cede climate management to private entities. Geo-engineering will be a natural, not to say organic, outgrowth of privately managed carbon trading.

Is this good?

Well, probably not. And the somewhat tense discussion between Shiva and Dwyer is a tempest in a teapot foretaste of the conflict between the forces of centralised management of food, energy and water and the forces of what, somewhat unfortunately, has been termed "anarchy". The less pejorative synonym for rebellion against unfairness and overweening power is, of course, democracy. However, the term "anarchy" probably better describes the potential for social conflict.

Very powerful interests will continue to creep towards greater control of food, energy and water; and geo-engineering will be a significant tool in a potentially despotic arsenal. And we will buy into it out of desperation. And in that bargain, people will once again cede control to a powerful new elite, and, to be dramatic for a moment, perhaps it will take a thousand years to achieve fairness, as people struggle to develop an effective ideology for thinking about a fundamental right to a livable world.

Or.....if people become aware of the strategies of creeping centralisation and the enticement of power and wealth that motivate the desire to control food, energy and water, who knows, maybe it will be possible to negotiate a social contract on terms that are fair rather than imperious. That would certainly save some time, eh.