Time of the Heroes

Time Magazine unveils its selection of environmental heroes for 2007. It's well worth the browse. While some of the heroes like, say, Al Gore, are (duh!) no surprise, others, such as the Nobel-winning atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen, who has proposed injecting sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to counteract global warming, are liable to be far less familiar. Crutzen's geoengineering scheme will no doubt strike many environmentalists as sheer madness, but the admiring write-up in Time is penned by no less an authority (and environmental hero) than NASA's James Hansen. Hansen calls Crutzen's proposal a "radical idea," but says Crutzen is a "scientists' scientist" who is always "one step ahead of everybody else."

Given the latest news regarding the unexpected acceleration in C02 levels, this may be where we're headed, like it or not. Even if it works (and volcanic eruptions prove it can), we'd still have to eliminate carbon emissions to stop ocean acidification. Until we accomplish that, however, Crutzen's plan could buy us desperately needed time. As scientist Ken Caldeira posed the question in the New York Times earlier this week, "Which is the more environmentally sensitive thing to do: let the Greenland ice sheet collapse and polar bears become extinct, or throw a little sulfate in the stratosphere? The second option is at least worth looking into."