This week’s reading is an article titled “Geoengineering and sustainability”, written by Leslie Paul Thiele, and while it has a very boring title it is a very interesting piece. It focuses on how far we should ethically go to attempt to fix the environment. There are two differing ideologies: the Gaian perspective and the Promethean perspective. The Gaian perspective is centered around the idea that we are a species that has evolved from the dirt of this earth just like every other species, so we don’t morally have the right to deploy power over the entire planet to the extent that some people are proposing. Essentially, they want to keep Earth as the holder of power and are against geoengineering. The Promethean perspective is pro-geoengineering and view it as a rightful technological evolution that we should take. They think that geoengineering is the best quipped solution to effectively addressing climate change.
Personally, I think that I am very much in favor of the Gaian perspective if you couldn’t pick that up already. I hadn’t thought about the actual moral qualms with effecting the planet to the extent that geoengineering would. I don’t fully disagree with the Promethean perspective considering that I want to be open to solutions to climate change, but I think that the Earth deserves respect. I am starting to view humans with an ecological perspective in the sense that I want to think of us as a species that, while very unique, are apart of a diverse environment full of unique species. We have already literally paved our way on this planet and have built stone into the sky and it seems like there is no way to go back. But I don’t think that we necessarily need to go forward. Technological progress, to me, has very little relevance to quality of life. We don’t need to go forward and to take control over every aspect of this planet. Also, once we do it, there is no going back. It’s not like we have shown that as a species we have enough self control to do this once and then not start to exploit it.
Overall, we are not gods. We are humans, and I think we should act like it. I am against playing god.
