Bold Actions Can Have Unintended Consequences

It’s the Ides of March, the date in 44 BCE on which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the building that housed a meeting of the Roman Senate.  A conspiracy of men called the Liberators had been plotting his assassination for months, driven by their perception that Caesar was setting himself up as a tyrant, but with sad irony (from the Writer’s Almanac): The assassination that was meant to save the Republic actually resulted, ultimately, in its downfall. It sparked a series of civil wars and led to Julius’ heir, Octavian, becoming Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor.  This, of course, was the very thing the conspirators had meant to ovoid.

Here we have a historic lesson of unintended consequences.  Bold steps can backfire on us, in ways we couldn’t possibly have foreseen.

Most of what we do in cleantech has outcomes that are completely predictable.  For instance, there is no doubt whatsoever that replacing coal with wind reduces emissions in the form of CO2, methane, heavy metals, and radioactive isotopes, making our planet a cleaner and safer place to live.

This certainty is not universal, however.

What about geoengineering, which postulates things like seeding the atmosphere with chemicals that reflect a greater portion of the sun’s infrared energy back into space before it is converted to ultraviolet at the Earth’s surface and gets trapped under the blanket of greenhouse gases?  IMO, it’s good that science is exploring various geoengineering options, for use as a last resort if required to combat global warming that would otherwise make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable via wildfires, droughts, floods, etc.  We hope that some combination of new technology and modifications in human behavior will bring this process under control, but having a backup plan is a solid idea.

It’s also a good thing that science knows how much it doesn’t know.  No one wants to go this route unless it’s absolutely necessary, and even if we pull the trigger, the tough decisions don’t go away.  Who gets to control the Earth’s thermostat? What’s the optimum temperature?  We can’t seem to deal rationally and humanely with one another now, under these close-to-ideal climatic conditions; let’s hope we don’t have to find out how we’ll get along when times get rough.