What are the lengths nations might be willing to go to in order to secure supremacy? This is a question we as a species have asked throughout our history and it seems as if the answer has changed over the millenia. Back before it was a realistic possibility to do so, military rhetoric used to be full of the idea of blowing an enemy off the face of the earth, but what if we could simply change the earth we’re facing? That is the question asked in “Jamais Cascio”:http://www.openthefuture.com/jamais_bio.html’s article in the January 2008 issue of “Foreign Policy”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com, “Battlefield Earth”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=414.
Building on a theme from his personal site, “OpentheFuture.com”:http://www.openthefuture.com, Cascio discusses the possibilities of geo-engineering as a strategic weapon. As climate science has proven, human actions have changed the way our Earth works in terms of raising overall atmospheric temperature but what if we could change things on purpose?
By manipulating our environment enough, the Saudis could in theory bring rain to Arabia and avoid the inevitable shortage of drinking water in that region. The Chinese could bring drought to Taiwan and force it’s high-value high-tech industry into mainland China’s eager arms. It sounds like a REALLY bad idea right? But that doesn’t mean someone won’t try it. In fact, Cascio rightly points out that our own US Government has tried it, first during Vietnam with Project Popeye–an effort to seed more rain clouds and strengthen the monsoons hitting the Ho Chi Minh trail–and then in the mid-90’s with the Air Force policy paper: “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.” I don’t know if this is an accurate predictor of the future, but I know it’s a future I don’t want to see.
More about articles about “global warming”:http://duenos.net/article/global-warming on Duenos.net.