Link of the Day: Hands Off Mother Earth!

Our friend Jim Thomas has been staying with us this weekend. He’s come to town from Montreal to speak at an activist summit that’s being hosted at Ryerson in advance of the G20, and one of the major issues he’s here to discuss is geoengineering.

“The modern concept of geoengineering (or climate engineering),” Wikipedia says, “is usually taken to mean proposals to deliberately manipulate the Earth’s climate to counteract the effects of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions.” It’s an interesting idea in principle, but of course it raises a host of ethical and ecological issues. These are the issues that Jim is in town to address.

Jim is the research program manager for an organization called ETC Group. The group is “dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights,” and “supports socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and… addresses international governance issues and corporate power.”

In keeping with these aims, ETC Group has launched the Hands Off Mother Earth! campaign. It’s “a global campaign to prevent real world deployment of geoengineering experiments.” If you’re like me, and you’re not ashamed to admit that a lot of this is over your head, than this site might be the introduction you need to the issues.

Do check it out. They’ve also got an account on Twitter, a blog you can follow, and a group for Facebook users.

Posted in Link of the Day