2016•Oxford University Press eBooksRequires access
Our planet and its biosphere
Olle Häggström
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Abstract
Our planet and its biosphere will remain our home, until the day (if it ever comes) when we emigrate into outer space or virtual realities. Human activities are altering this environment in unintended and misbegotten ways, which may harm our prospects for a prosperous future. This chapter focuses mainly on the climate crisis and on various radical proposals for fixing it, including the dangerous geoengineering idea of pumping sulfur into the stratosphere to block out some of the sunlight. Artificial removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is possibly a better idea, because it attacks the problem at its roots rather than just the symptoms, but it is not clear how we can implement it.