Geoengineering Is a Variant of Terraforming

This morning, I've read about both terraforming and geoengineering. Terraforming is essentially converting other planets to livable conditions for humans. That is, we could live on them unaided by advanced technology, as humans have lived on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. Eventually, the ultimate goal would be for fine-tuned terraforming to make other planets not just livable, but ideal for human conditions. Geoengineering is the practice of altering the Earth's climate to make it more livable for humans, assuming anthropogenic climate change may or will make life harder for many, many millions of people later this century.

So, first of all, if you zoom in real close, it seems geoengineering is a form of terraforming. That is, humans have the power to transform a planet's superterranean conditions, Earth, Mars, or other, at rates astronomically faster than what would happen naturally. We can do this in a way that makes such planets either more or less livable for humans, in terms of matters of degree. The condition of the climate, of the land, air, and seas, for the thousands of years over which humans evolved, could be considered more-or-less ideal conditions for our survival.

Projecting into the future, making the conditions on other planets a climactic paradise, as once was the case in the human past, goes beyond ideal into the idyllic. This is an ideal version of any planet humans could live on, including Earth, based on a past version of Earth. Call this human vision for a planet: "Terra". In this sense, Earth is, not now, Terra. Earth isn't like the ideal conditions it once was for humanity, for all the species we've lived with for our entire history and prehistory. It won't be like that in the future. If humanity disappeared from the Earth today, the climate won't return to those conditions for thousands of years. With geoengineering, Earth may return to those conditions faster, but it will probably take much longer than a typical human lifespan for that to happen. So, geoengineering seems to be a relatively minute, early version of terraforming. This also implies, depending on how the future goes, that one day Mars will be more livable than Earth. This seems very unlikely, but, in something like 2,000 years, if terraforming Mars goes very well, and geoengineering and climate change on Earth go very poorly, Mars could have the better climate, and be the world you'd prefer to live on. I'll leave you with that to ponder.