The authors of Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, have a new book out (SuperFreakonomics) and they were featured this past Friday on ABC’s 20/20 news program. Climate change was among the topics covered in the book and the television program. You can watch excerpts of the program here (parts 3 and 4 are the most relevant).

Many of the points the authors raised are already well known. For example, how methane emitted by cows and other livestock are 25X more damaging to the environment than CO2, or how locally-grown produce is not necessarily ‘more green’ than imported produce when viewed from a total carbon footprint perspective. But what interested me most about the interview was their suggestion that the quickest, cheapest, and most effective solutions to climate change will be those that are scientifically engineered, not those that depend mostly on legislation and behavior change.

The authors, for example, highlight some of the research being conducted by Intellectual Ventures (IV), an “invention company” founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation. One of IV’s ideas is called the StratoShield. Here is an excerpt from a whitepaper published by IV about the idea (you can also watch a short video here):

The StratoShield is one possible way to respond to a climate emergency in which greenhouse warming becomes intolerable. The StratoShield would reverse greenhouse warming by slightly reduc­ing the amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth. The shield does this by increasing the amount of sulfur aerosols injected into the stratosphere by about 1%, a process that happens naturally when­ever volcanoes erupt. The aerosols reflect incoming sunlight back into space. Although the change in sunlight would be imperceptible to human eyes—and probably beneficial for plants—it would have a substantial cooling effect for the part of the Earth under the shield.

The [StratoShield] would pump [sulfur aerosols up to the stratosphere] in liquid form through a very long hose, suspended by one or more balloons. Atomizers at the top of the hose would spray the clear liquid out into the air as a very fine mist, which wind currents would then spread around the circumference of the planet.

Interestingly, The Atlantic published an article this summer by Graeme Wood on this very topic (see “Re-Engineering the Earth”). The focus of Mr. Wood’s article, however, was more cautionary, as the following excerpt illustrates:

As the threat of global warming grows more urgent, a few scientists are considering radical—and possibly extremely dangerous—schemes for reengineering the climate by brute force. Their ideas are technologically plausible and quite cheap. So cheap, in fact, that a rich and committed environmentalist could act on them tomorrow. And that’s the scariest part.

The science behind geo-engineering is outside my area of expertise, so I can’t really say whether the StratoShield is a good idea or not. But I agree with what it and other ideas symbolize: that the road to a timely and cost-effective climate change solution will be off the beaten path, and it will be paved by engineers and scientists, not politicians.

From a supply chain perspective, I go back to what I wrote in February 2008, where I compared the trends occurring in the pharmaceutical industry to what should occur in ‘green’ supply chain management (see “Inconvenient Truths About ‘Green’ Supply Chain Management”):

As we reach the limits of what traditional medicines can accomplish, the pharmaceutical industry is investing heavily in biotechnology and stem cell research, revolutionary new ways to treat diseases. It’s not about ingesting chemicals to treat symptoms; it’s about deciphering the inner workings of our DNA, understanding how a group of cells turn into a lung, or a heart, or a liver, so that when our organs are afflicted with disease, we can generate new ones. This is the future of medicine, and it’s quickly approaching.

And as we reach the limits of what current ‘green’ initiatives can accomplish, we need to transform the DNA of our supply chains. We must change the way we design products and supply chain networks; we must create completely new business models and redefine supplier and customer relationships; and we must reshape our expectations as consumers.