Climate security

A Disappointing New Problem With Geo-Engineering

Over the past few years, I’ve heard dozens of scientists talk about solar geo-engineering, the once outlandish idea that humanity should counteract climate change by releasing special gases into the stratosphere to reflect away sunlight and cool the planet.

But I’ve never heard it discussed in quite the terms of Jonathan Proctor, an agricultural economist at UC Berkeley.

“You’re in an arena with a big bear,” he told me. (The bear is climate change.) “And the question is: Should you throw a lion into the arena? You know, maybe they’ll fight and kill each other. Or maybe they’ll just both kill you.”

That lion is looking worse and worse. Recently, a surge of academic research has revealed that solar geo-engineering will be anything but straightforward. Solar geo-engineering is now taken seriously at the highest echelons of science: It commands its own research center at Harvard, a serious book from anEconomist editor, and a private triennial global meeting. Even as some of its most devoted researchers doubt it will succeed, they add that climate change’s severe consequences may make it a necessity.