Author Fiekowsky Speaks About Choosing Not to Ride Off the Climate Cliff

By Scott Steward

Davis, like the rest of humanity, is on course to ride off a climate change cliff. We will just do it on bikes.

If you don't want that kind of future then come see the author of "Climate Restoration,” Peter Fiekowsky speak this Thursday at 7:00 pm (see details at end).

Peter does not have all the answers, but he has taken on what needs to be taken on in his treatment of the scale and urgency to the problem of survival in the face of climate change. Peter's assumptive voice patronizes, but his book is an important contribution to where we need to go to reach "safe harbor."

For a crib notes summary of the book you can read a review at Earth.org. The reviewer, Maria Mendez, holds back from what could really bother you about the author's interpretation of the elite pedigree behind the proposed solutions to draw down CO₂. Fiekowsky spends no ink on the legacy of the slave enabled colonialist system that lives on in our extractive economy and remains a real danger to his own aspirations. 

That said, Peter Fiekowsky is an ally in the forces of change that apply to climate action and provide for a just transition and benevolent community.  His privileged myopia need not get in our way of a better path toward the rapid evaluation of, if and how best to apply, geoengineering to reduce hundreds of gigatons of CO₂ from the atmosphere by 2050.  I believe he would be open to constructive suggestions about how to include more voices in the benefits and origin stories of this work.

Stopping fossil fuel use is necessary and Fiekowsky does not disagree.  What riles the climate justice activist, who is his necessary ally, is the idea that holding oil companies accountable, and similar policy work, is never going to happen.  That view does not jive with reality. There would be no $369 billion dollar Inflation Reduction Act (funding for renewable energy and probably geoengineering research), if it was not for the direct action of youth and the political action work of the raft of organizations, like Indivisible Yolo, holding back the fatalist authoritarians who would destroy the planet (along with democracy.)

Peter is politically aloof, which is useful for an entrepreneur counting on petro dollars (any dollars) to see the privatization of large scale climate restoration take hold.  He is appealing to the 1% that has most all the money. I don’t think he is wrong in his assessment that the wealthy need to engage in funding solutions.  "That's the reality we have."  I would also point out that the Green New Deal is not over, it's just stalled and that the exploration of Climate Restoration could be part of that deal.  It's "both and." We need Peter, and his growing crew, and they need us.

As Peter Fiekowsky says, geoengineering is only possible because the outcomes of climate change are now understood. Best case is bad (IPCC). The world's atmosphere is holding 400+ parts per million of CO₂. Reducing that slightly by 2050 will submerge too much land and leave too many displaced by one disaster after another. Society will not survive. We need to find ways to reduce the carbon we put into the atmosphere – by the gigaton – that could very well require intervention.

The problem is that the discussion of large scale geoengineering may only produce rhetorical slack. We absolutely do not want to continue to encourage toxic practices because we can claim that "mom," mother earth, has more capacity to clean up after us.  We have had quite enough slack given, these last six hundred years, to unaccountable markets that erode our ability to create a more respectful earth culture and remove bad actors from power.

If the geoengineering cat is out of the bag, then with it must come the implementation of more equity for the public. Peter's theories of beneficent market driven solutions are happy talk for far too many of us. His book describes billions to be made and gigatons to be drawn down using: fossil-fuel-free sources, ocean iron fertilization, kelp forestation, and methane (heat burst) protection; all using resources that we need to agree to use on the land and the sea that we share.

The geoengineering that Fiekowsky assembles is "large scale biomimicry." Biomimicry is a lovely word, but I want to see that science broadly supports the natural systems claims along with a review of the math that deserves general buy-in.  Provided the assumptions are tested, I hope Peter Fiekowsky will be an agent of change and work to be less complicit with current systemic flaws and reorient the implementation of his work toward just transition.  These changes will make our success more possible.

Come see Peter Fiekowsky speak on Thursday 7:00 pm at the Davis Community Church Fellowship Room, 421 D St. A couple dozen seats are currently available, or tune in via Zoom. Yolo Citizens Climate Lobby, Ocean Iron Fertilization Alliance, Cool Davis and the IY Local Climate Action team will be there. Please register for this free event on Eventbrite to ensure you’ll have a seat. If you can’t join in person, please send an email to indivisibleyolo@gmail.com and they will send you the Zoom info when it becomes available.