Earlier this evening, as I was working on my laptop, I noticed that it was rapidly heating up, to the extent that it was burning my skin through two layers of cloth. This is a device that routinely runs a half-dozen apps simultaneously without breaking a sweat, and the browser (Firefox) also seldom struggles to handle the few score tabs I have open at all times. Since I’d only been browsing until then, I checked about:processes to find if any of the tabs could be the culprit, and it was: the Climate Overshoot Commission (COC) website. Which is ironic because the COC was recently in the news for a report in which it detailed its (prominent) members’ deliberations on how the world’s countries could accelerate emission cuts and not overshoot emissions thresholds.
The COC itself was the product of deliberations among some scientists who wished to test solar geoengineering but couldn’t. And though the report advises against deploying this risky technology without thoroughly studying it first, it also insists that it should remain on the table among other climate mitigation strategies, including good ol’ cutting emissions. Irrespective of what its support for geoengineering implies for scientific and political consensus on the idea, the COC can also help by considerably simplifying its website so it doesn’t guzzle more computing power than all the 56 other tabs combined, and around 3 W just to stay open. The findings aren’t even that sensible.