After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (2019) by Holly Jean Buck

​With this book, Buck operates in the much unexplored zone between apolitical techno-optimists and left-leaning critics who dismiss technology completely. She extricates the discussion of geoengineering and climate technologies away from the current techno-scientific, expert-led discourse, and pulls it into the messy realm of politics. For Buck, climate technologies can be multiple things: they are a variety of practices; a verb or process, not a noun/thing; a form of governance; an infrastructure. The left refuses to engage with climate technologies, given that such discussions could stem efforts to decarbonize; however, the development and creation of climate technologies cannot just be left to the experts—civil society engagement is required to shape these technologies in a democratic way.
 
Why climate technologies? Buck adopts the bathtub metaphor to respond to this question. Not only do we need to stop the flow of water into the bathtub (de-carbonize) but we also need to remove the water currently sitting in the bathtub (remove carbon dioxide through technologies). It is simple arithmetic: since the Industrial Revolution human beings have emitted 2,200 gigatons of CO2 and carbon dioxide equivalents, and emitting 1,000 more gigatons of CO2 will raise the temperature by 2 degrees. Since human beings emit 40 gigatons of CO2, or 50 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum, we only have 20 years until the carbon budget is used up, when the water in the bathtub starts to spill out. (Note: The Sixth IPCC Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change discusses carbon removal technologies in some depth as well.)
 
There are two broad categories of carbon removal technologies: 1. biological climate solutions and 2. engineered solutions. For biological climate solutions, carbon is sequestered in living things; as for engineered solutions, carbon is buried geologically. In her discussion of the various solutions under each category, Buck writes in a mode that is semi-journalistic, partly-speculative fiction, and semi-academic. She writes about her numerous travels all over the world to attend conferences, interview experts, and visit field sites, contextualizing and adding to the discussions with secondary sources. She caps off the discussion of the solutions with a short story to give readers a feel of a possible future.
 
Both biological climate solutions and engineered solutions cannot be addressed through the current political-economic status quo. Buck suggests that carbon removal is seen more productively through the frame of waste removal—a public good—it is not something that could be left to market-driven incentives. Carbon removal at a socially significant level will require a massive societal transformation. Buck spends the last third or so of her book exploring the contours of such a society.
 
(Note: I cut this review short and do not mention one of the key topics in the book, which was mentioned in the title: solar geoengineering.)

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