CfC’s February showcase featured a presentation from Peter Dynes of the MEER:Reflection project, and focused on the climate reality of the Anthropocene and the radical solutions required to reverse the sixth mass extinction currently ongoing due to abrupt thermal heating.
Watch the presentation here:
One of the most sobering messages of the talk highlighted the wide-spread assumption that, if sufficient decarbonisation is achieved, the climate crisis will be resolved and so everyone needs to reduce their carbon footprint. But this won’t suffice, and if we want to halt global heating (i.e. stop the global temperature rising), then we must reduce net heating to zero. The focus of the MEER project is therefore on global cooling and dealing with the global warming that is already locked in, thus buying us more time to deal with CO2 levels. Peter also talked about some of the dangers associated with certain renewable energy forms such as wind and solar PV, and suggested that other forms such as concentrated solar and thermal, even harvesting oysters, might prove to be better options and would work in tandem with MEER solutions.
And while many of us are cynical about technological silver-bullets offered as solutions to the enormous environmental challenge we face, refreshingly MEER also shares those reservations. The MEER team offers a suite of solutions that together must be used to stop the climate catastrophe, and many of these work in symbiosis with nature’s natural processes. The MEER team also adheres to an open source philosophy where the solutions developed will be made available to local communities and will not be owned by profit-driven corporations. And there is potential to create worker- and community-owned co-operatives when it comes to solution delivery.
