Should We Dim the Sun? Will We Even Have a Choice?
\u201cWe are as gods and might as well get good at it,\u201d Stewart Brand famously wrote in \u201cThe Whole Earth Catalogue.\u201d Human beings act upon nature at fantastic scale, altering whole ecosystems, terraforming the world to our purposes, breeding new species into existence and driving countless more into extinction. The power we wield is awesome. But Brand was overly optimistic. We did not get good at it. We are terrible at it, and the consequences surround us.\n\nThat\u2019s the central theme of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert\u2019s new book, \u201cUnder a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.\u201d And yet, there is no going back. We will not return to a prelapsarian period where humans let nature alone. Indeed, as Kolbert shows, there is no natural nature left \u2014 we live in the world (and in particular, a climate) we altered, and are altering. The awful knowledge that our interventions have gone awry again and again must be paired with the awful reality that we have no choice save to try to manage the mess we have made.\n\nExamples abound in Kolbert\u2019s book, but in my conversation with her I wanted to focus on one that obsesses me: solar geoengineering. To even contemplate it feels like the height of hubris. Are we really going to dim the sun? And yet, any reasonable analysis of the mismatch between our glacial politics and our rapidly warming planet demands that we deny ourselves the luxury of only contemplating the solutions we would prefer. With every subsequent day that our politics fails, the choices that we will need to make in the future become worse.\n\nThis is a conversation about some of the difficult trade-offs and suboptimal options that we are left with in what Kolbert describes as a \u201cno-analog moment.\u201d We discuss the prospect of intentionally sending sulfurous particles into the atmosphere to dim the sun, whether \u201ccarbon capture\u201d technology could scale up to the levels needed to make a dent in emissions levels, the ethics of using gene editing technologies to make endangered species more resistant to climate change, the governance mechanisms needed to prevent these technologies from getting out of hand, what a healthier narrative about humanity\u2019s relationship with nature would sound like, how the pandemic altered carbon emissions, and more.\n\nAt the end, we discuss another fascinating question that Kolbert wrote about recently in The New Yorker: Why is a Harvard astrophysicist arguing Earth has already been visited by aliens, and should we believe him?\n\nMentioned in this episode: \n\nWhole Earth Catalogue\n\nField Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert\n\nThe Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert\n\nThe Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson\n\nExtraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb\n\nRecommendations: \n\n"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald\n\n"The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka"\n\n"The Song of the Dodo" by David Quammen\n\n"Global Warming (The Complete Briefing)" by John Houghton\n\n"Cosmicomics" by Italo Calvino\n\n"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster\n\n"Charlotte\u2019s Web" by E.B. White\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Rog\xe9 Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.