Geo-Engineering Contest Heats Up as April Fools' Day Approaches

With less than a month left (March 2009) to enter ETC Group’s Pie-in-the-Sky contest, people from all over the world are sending in their outlandish ideas to re-engineer the planet so it (and we) can survive climate change.

Some professional geo-engineers have real designs in the works to manipulate the earth, sea and atmosphere on a large scale – to make carbon disappear, to keep sunlight from hitting the earth and, of course, to profit from the carbon market. They're a busy bunch: pleading their case in the press and at meetings of international environmental bodies; dumping iron particles from ships to “fertilize” the ocean; applying for monopoly patents on schemes to increase the carbon-sequestering capacity of plants by applying proprietary insecticides(!)¹;  and publishing articles in influential journals declaring that now is the time to “take geo-engineering out of the closet.” ²

Activists and concerned people around the world are also ready to take geo-engineering out of the closet – to expose the climate-profiteers and their plans that, in the absence of precaution, could worsen climate chaos. If you agree that the future of the planet shouldn't be left to geo-engineering technophiles, join the campaign and send us your best/worst pie-in-the-sky example. In the first month since we launched our contest, we've received proposals to:

•    Get everyone on the planet to have their teeth whitened so we can smile at the sun en masse (thereby reflecting the sunlight back to the atmosphere)
•    Smoke a new brand of cigarette, CLIMAL (not to be confused with Camel), which sequesters carbon in its biochar filter. The butts should be stubbed out on the ground, which may fertilize the soils. Take up smoking for the health of the planet!
•    Wrap large swaths of the Sahara, Arabian and Gobi deserts in white plastic sheets to reflect sunlight back into space.
•    Have everyone on earth carry paper bags in which to re-breathe our exhaled CO₂ a few times so we don't exceed our PEA (Personal Emissions Allowance, of course)

One of the above submissions is a serious proposal.  Can you spot which one? (Answer at end of news release.)