This week on Earth Beat: can we engineer our way out of climate change or will rogue scientists cause catastrophe? No Impact Man tries to erase his footprint; Imagining a world without humans; Building with plants on roofs and walls, and green greenhouses.

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CLIMATE CONTROL

Cloud seeding in California
Seeding clouds with silver iodide to increase rainfall has become a common practice around the world. Whether its effective or harms the environment is up for debate. Christina Aanestad reports from California, where energy company PG&E seeds clouds to create more water for its hydropower plants.
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Geoengineering a cooler climate
As the threat of man-made climate change increases, some people are even considering how to alter whole weather patterns to stave off global warming. James Fleming is a historian of science at Colby College. He talks to Earth Beat about past attempts at climate control and the bold ideas currently being floated. James Fleming's new book, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, will hit the shelves next year.
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A SMALLER FOOTPRINT, OR NONE AT ALL

No Impact Man
Colin Beavan spent a year trying to not just lessen his environmental footprint, but erase it all together. He’s been described as a sustainable super hero as well as a self righteous finger-wagging tyrant. Colin Beavan talks to Earth Beat about his year of going without.
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Check out Colin's blog

Watch a trailer for No Impact Man:

Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day started in reaction to what some saw as over consumption in wealthier nations. In the US it’s held on the day after Thanksgiving – traditionally when many Americans swarm to the shops. Slowly the idea is spreading to other countries, but it’s not universally loved. RNW reporter and disgraceful spendthrift Marijke Peters went to some shops in the Dutch town of Wageningen to buy nothing.
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The World Without Us
Of course the ultimate way to lessen our impact on the planet would be to just get rid of us altogether. Not that this is likely in the foreseeable future, but journalist Alan Weisman considered this modest proposal in his book The World Without Us. Alan talks to Earth Beat about what the world would look like if we all just disappeared.
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GREEN BUILDINGS, LITERALLY

Vertical gardens
Patrick Blanc is a botanist who pioneered the idea of so-called vertical gardens. The idea is to use plants to purify the air and to insulate walls. Nowadays you can see some of Patrick’s amazing gardens on the walls of cities around the world. He told Earth Beat that he never intended to start a movement – he just wanted to keep his fish tank clean.
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Green roofs
Mathijs Bourdrez is a roof doctor. He considers many of the roofs in cities to be unwell because they have no green on them – just bare tar and concrete. He’s determined to change all this, one roof at a time. The doctor makes a house call to Marnie’s apartment.
Listen to the doctor's visit

Green greenhouses
When you were a kid, you may have played with a magnifying glass, concentrating the sunlight into a white-hot spot. Dutch scientist Dr. Piet Sonneveld of Wageningen University took that idea and used it to invent a greenhouse which produces electricity. Earth Beat’s Thijs Westerbeek reports.
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On next week’s edition of Earth Beat: We return to Bhopal, India, 25 years after one of the most deadly industrial accidents in modern times and hear memories from survivors that are still vivid today. And we look ahead to the climate conference in Copenhagen and ask what’s at stake.

Top photo: adapted from artwork by Frederick Siebel, on the cover of Collier's magazine, 28 May 1954 (will also feature on the cover of James Fleming's book).