Solar engineering would see reflective particles released into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s … [+]
Getty Images
The Earth is warming rapidly as a result of human-caused emissions. So what should humanity do about it?
One of the more controversial suggestions is that we should simply prevent so much heat reaching Earth in the first place. Proponents of so-called solar geoengineering, such as tech billionaire Bill Gates, say techniques intended to block a portion of the solar radiation reaching the planet ought to be considered. Gates himself has put his money where his mouth is, backing a Harvard University experiment to look at the effect of spraying particles into the stratosphere to, in theory, create a global cooling effect.
It sounds very much like the plot of one science fiction movie in particular—namely Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 film Snowpiercer, in which scientists release aerosols into the sky in a desperate bid to stop rampant global warming. Let’s just say the plan doesn’t work out as intended.
Now, concerned that science fiction could end up becoming science fact in all the wrong ways, an international coalition of researchers and campaigners has called for an end to solar geoengineering plans.
In an open letter, the 16 initiators of the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement—all scholars in their own right—argue there are three main grounds for preventing the use of such technologies.
First, they point to the unknown risks: deploying solar geoengineering tech could backfire, potentially catastrophically. “The risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known,” the scholars say. “Impacts will vary across regions, and there are uncertainties about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic needs of food and water.”
Next, they say, the technologies could be used by governments or corporations to prevent work on other, less risky methods to combat climate change, such as reducing the use of fossil fuels. “The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies,” the authors write.
Lastly, they ask, who would get to decide how solar geoengineering is used—and how would such a decision be fair? “The current global governance system is unfit to develop and implement the far-reaching agreements needed to maintain fair, inclusive, and effective political control over solar geoengineering deployment,” they say, noting that, for example, “the United Nations Security Council, dominated by only five countries with veto power, lacks the global legitimacy that would be required to effectively regulate solar geoengineering deployment.”
Frank Biermann, professor of global sustainability governance at Utrecht University and one of the letter’s initiators, summed up the signatories’ stance by saying: “Solar engineering is not necessary. Neither is it desirable, ethical, or politically governable.”
The letter goes on to call for five measures to be adhered to by the international community: no public funding for solar geoengineering; no outdoor experiments; no patents for solar geoengineering tech; no deployment of such tech; and no support for solar geoengineering from international institutions.
More than 45 heavyweight academics, law professors and writers have signed the letter, including award-winning author Amitav Ghosh, Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer professor of science and technology studies at Harvard Kennedy School, and Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Halley professor of physics at the University of Oxford.
And it’s not just academics who object to the concept and practice of solar geoengineering. In June 2021, some 30 groups of indigenous peoples from around the world called on Harvard University to abandon the Gates-backed plans to test its solar geoengineering tech with the help of the Swedish Space Corporation. “We do not approve legitimising development towards solar geoengineering technology, nor for it to be conducted in or above our lands, territories and skies, nor in any ecosystems anywhere,” the signatories stated in a letter drafted by the Saami Council, which represents indigenous Saami people across Scandinavia and in Russia. Prominent campaigner Greta Thunberg came out in support of the indigenous peoples and against solar geoengineering.
The indigenous peoples were successful, and the test was cancelled.
Yet the debate over solar geoengineering is likely to persist, as it enjoys the backing of wealthy individuals such as Gates, and the support of key scientific institutions, including the powerful U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which is urging the U.S. government to set up a federal research program to advance the technologies to the tune of up to $200 million. Elsewhere, the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative aims to get the United Nations to discuss its plan for what it calls “solar radiation modification” at the UN General Assembly in 2023.
For some, the potential rewards of solar geoengineering in the face of a warming planet are clearly too tantalizing to resist, even when balanced against its unknown risks and fraught ethical implications.
The full text of the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement can be read here.
