Strategy Includes Pollution Fighting Technology

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 12 DAYS

At today’s WICO press conference, Ambassador Lazlo announced that testing of the global strategy will begin tomorrow and likely last for at least a week. She then introduced Zara Adsa, who is on the team dedicated to development of tactics for tracking and managing climate feedbacks, and has expertise in reducing air pollution without causing more atmospheric warming by the loss of its cooling effects.

She began with a statement. “One of our strategy’s goals is to remove and render harmless all pollution from the biosphere, with priorities on air and water because of their critical roles in maintaining life. Ideally, we would like to enlist the help of natural processes that include contributions by other species that help maintain healthy ecosystems. We are however not averse to using technology to supplement the effort, so long as it does not make things worse. Both approaches are built into the global strategy.”

When asked what kinds of technology she meant, she revealed that genetic engineering of microbes already present in the air is underway using existing approaches developed originally by the international defense industry. She added, “The microbes are being programmed to engorge themselves, convert the pollutants into non-toxic substances, and then die, with their remains available as food for plants and animals. Our team’s management function includes ensuring that resulting growth of the consumers does not overload their ecosystems; in other words, causing more problems than we fix.”

Several reporters expressed concern about the inherent danger of deploying new technologies like the one she described. She replied, “As I implied, it is an option that would only be employed if natural solutions cannot be found and scaled up as necessary. The fact that conditions are as bad as they are is a strong signal that enough natural solutions either do not exist, or are not being deployed appropriately. The discovery process will identify which is the case, and assist other species as much as possible where deployment is the problem.”

Reality Check

The pollution problem is real, but the approaches are totally speculative.