Page 208 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

likely, the social order. Many also saw themselves as agents of climate change.
Even in fictional accounts of weather and climate control, much of the dramatic
tension is derived from fundamental fears. An incomplete understanding, fueled
by fear, may result in ineffective or even dangerous interventions. In the field
of climate change, the two main approaches seem to be big technical fixes and
social engineering.
In 1955 in a prominent article titled “Can We Survive Technology?” von
Neumann referred to climate control as a thoroughly “abnormal” industry. He
thought that weather control using chemical agents and climate control through
modifying surface albedo or otherwise managing solar radiation were distinct
possibilities for the near future. He argued that such intervention could have
“rather fantastic effects” on a scale difficult to imagine. He pointed out that it was
not necessarily rational to alter the climate of specific regions or purposely trig-
ger a new ice age. Tinkering with the Earth’s heat budget or the atmosphere’s gen-
eral circulation “will merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other more
thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war may already have done.”
In his opinion, climate control, like other “intrinsically useful” modern technolo-
gies, could lend itself to unprecedented destruction and to forms of warfare as
yet unimagined. Climate manipulation could alter the entire globe and shatter
the existing political order. He made the Janus-faced nature of weather and cli-
mate control clear. The central question was not “What can we do?” but “What
should we do?” This was the “maturing crisis of technology,” a crisis made more
urgent by the rapidity of progress.
Banning particular technologies was not the answer for von Neumann. Per-
haps, he thought, war could be eliminated as a means of national policy. Yet he
ultimately deemed survival only a “possibility,” since elements of future conflict
existed then, as today, while the means of destruction grew ever more powerful
and was reaching the global level.
In Baconian terms, do we consider climate to be based on the unconstrained
operations of nature, now modified inadvertently by human activities, or do we
seek to engineer climate, constrain it, and mold it to our will? Certainly, the
ubiquity and scale of indoor air-conditioning could not have been imagined less
than a century ago, but what about fixing the sky itself? In attempting to do so,
we run the risk of violently rending the bonds of nature and unleashing unin-
tended side effects or purposely calculated destruction. After all, von Neumann
identified frenetic “progress” as a key contributor to the maturing crisis of tech-
nology. Fumbling for an ultimate solution, but falling well short, he suggested
that the brightest prospects for survival lay in patience, flexibility, intelligence,
humility, dedication, oversight, sacrifice—and a healthy dose of good luck. 2

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