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2019 GSA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

The Future for Geoscience in the Context of

Emerging Climate Disruption

Donald I. Siegel, Syracuse University, We could also add hydrogen-based energy to our energy portfo-
Syracuse, New York, USA; president@ lio, or miraculously discover a brand-new energy source that can be
geosociety.org tied to the current grid. But given the time to do this, I find the odds
are long to globally accomplish this task.
I speak to climate disruption, the result of Why? Because of the toxic mix of modern nationalism, environ-
the most sweeping tragedy of the commons, mentalism unwilling to accept technological changes in energy and
when nations use a resource owned by none, food production, a western public unwilling to understand absolute
in this case the atmosphere (Hardin, 1968), risk or accept economic inconvenience, and poor nations who logi-
and then individually degrade it to achieve cally want to have good health and opportunities like us.
Donald I. Siegel individual advantage. The tragedy of the Does anyone really think that hydrocarbons and coal will glob-
commons originally referred to common ally disappear as fuels? That poorer nations with these resources
pastures where farmers would graze their animal stock. When each will not exploit them to help their economies? Does anyone think
farmer incrementally added more animals—thinking nothing bad when Venezuela once again becomes a viable country it will not
would happen—the pasture failed. Much as humanity has incremen- exploit the biggest economic resource it has—Maracaibo Basin
tally added greenhouse gases to our collective atmosphere. crude? Or, that other nations will not buy what we here in America
Sadly, I see no evidence that most nations releasing greenhouse don’t use and at lower prices?
gases will make the necessary economic and political decisions to My consulting partner Ed Hinchey (also a GSA member) tells me
prevent at least a two-degree increase in average tropospheric tem- that using fossil fuels constitutes a zero-sum game. Globally, oil
perature—a temperature beyond which severe climate disruption and gas may very well be used to the very last drop, like coffee in
will almost certainly affect our way of life and the survival of many, the Maxwell House advertisement. I sadly have to agree with him.
if not most, current ecosystems (e.g., Knutti et al., 2016). Large The future energy demand remains that great, and fossil fuels are
swaths of our planet will suffer hell or high water or both. the densest energy source next to nuclear.
Hypothetically, of course, humanity could scale up and generate Please understand, I am not suggesting we abandon “going green.”
sufficient green energy by covering hundreds of thousands of square I repeat. I am not suggesting that we abandon going green with solar
miles in the world’s major deserts with solar panels and then retool- and wind. Far from it. Humanity globally needs to build out solar and
ing up our electric grids. Landscapes would be created filled with wind to the extent that identified natural resources, economics, and
solar panels and turbines as far as the eye could see, like cornfields in politics allow us to do it. Globally. That is the problem. Globally. How
Iowa. Here in the United States, we’d cover an area equivalent to at can that be done fast and efficiently today to replace fossil fuels? And
least two states and globally, the area of a medium-sized country. You be politically and economically acceptable.
just have to look at the figure at https://ourworldindata.org/energy I have to conclude that until climate disruption seriously affects
-production-and-changing-energy-sources to see how far we have to large swaths of economically well-to-do populations, little will be
go. Historically, it takes about three decades for a new energy to done at the scale needed to make a global difference—I repeat—at
replace even 20% of what was used prior. How can we possibly go the scale needed. The global scale (I am purposely being redun-
renewable globally (the operative word to make a difference) given dant). It will not work at the village scale. Villages and towns can’t
this historical reality? solve the problem because most of the world’s population lives in
In addition, humanity will also have to develop orders-of -magnitude giant megacities that need continual baseline uninterrupted power.
more electrical storage capacity and find and mine up to ten times Adapting to environmental disruption and trying to go green as
more rare elements than we now get from open pits or playa lakes to do best we can will be humanity’s best hope for our future. By adapta-
the green energy. Humanity already has mined out the easy elements tion I mean developing new science and engineering technology
to find. Where will the rest come from? designed to build extensive wetlands, dikes, and other ways to
We also may have to remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere attenuate floods; new regional water delivery systems and desali-
too. Think of this—another huge energy demand on top of the rest! nation plants; genetic advances designed to grow plants under
It’s mind-boggling to me that this can be done in the next few stressful climatic conditions; and extensive exploration for rare ele-
decades. ments and then extracting them with attendant additional environ-
There are other options to go green beyond solar and wind. We could mental cost—perhaps even from the ocean floor.
build out large numbers of twenty-first–century modular modern I also see experiments in the near future on how to best place aero-
nuclear power plants, perhaps fueled by thorium. Much safer nuclear sols into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight. The National
than before constitutes a reality now. The technology of the three reac- Academy of Sciences (NRC, 2015) suggested we should begin these
tors (out of about 450 reactors) worldwide that critically failed because experiments sooner than later because geoengineering the atmo-
of gross human error or mega-earthquakes has long gone. sphere will be humanity’s last resort. Technically geoengineering the

GSA Today, v. 30, no. 2, https://doi.org/10.1130/GSAT19PrsAdrs.1.

4 GSA Today | February 2020