Global Courant 2023-04-13 10:34:29
The United Nations Environment Programme, the world’s leading environmental voice, said in late February that much more research into the risks and benefits of SRM would be needed before any consideration could be made for its possible deployment.
David Ganon | Afp | Getty Images
Billionaires including Bill Gates, George Soros and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz have all expressed an interest in “solar geoengineering,” a highly controversial idea that involves cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space.
There are growing calls to accelerate research into solar radiation management (SRM), also known as solar geoengineering, especially as the planet moves closer to crossing the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature limit.
This temperature threshold is widely recognized as critical as it increases the likelihood of so-called tipping points moving past this level. Tipping points are thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts throughout Earth’s entire life support system.
Solar geoengineering, long opposed by environmental campaign groups, has been pushed back into the climate policy discourse in recent months.
At the end of February, more than 60 researchers from leading institutions published a call for proposals more in-depth study of the strategyas well as small-scale field experiments, while a UN report suggested the time had come to investigate whether SRM could help to combat the climate crisis.
The White House also announced in October last year that it would continue with a five-year research plan to assess ways to modify the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth.
However, hundreds of climate scientists firmly oppose the growing call for solar geoengineering research and its possible development.
They have warned in an open letter that the increasing normalization of SRM technologies as a potential solution to climate change is a cause for concern – one that could have dangerous and unexpected consequences.
What is Solar Geoengineering?
Nevertheless, some climate scientists concerned that humanity will exceed its emissions targets say further research into SRM is important to figure out how best to balance these risks against a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures.
It’s not a softening. It is a highly speculative set of proposed technological interventions in the atmosphere.
Lili Fuhr
Deputy Director of the Center for International Environmental Law
The United Nations Environment Programme, the world’s leading environmental voice, said in late February that much more research into the risks and benefits of SRM would be needed before any consideration could be made for its possible deployment.
UNEP confirmed that SRM is not yet ready for large-scale deployment and stressed that there is no substitute for urgent and massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, “which must remain the global priority”.
To be sure, researchers advocating the rigorous study of SRM do not endorse solar geoengineering as a climate solution.
Arguments against further research on SRM have been set out in a 2022 paperwhich concludes, however, that “planetary-scale solar geoengineering cannot be governed in a globally inclusive and equitable manner within the current international political system.”
The newspaper is calling for an international non-use agreement for solar geoengineering, a call that has since gained the support of hundreds of climate scientists.
Lili Fuhr, deputy director of the Center for International Environmental Law, described solar radiation management or solar geoengineering as “the ultimate bogus solution.”
“It’s not mitigation,” Fuhr said at a press briefing earlier this month. “It’s a highly speculative set of proposed technological interventions in the atmosphere.”
Fuhr stressed that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had reviewed the controversial technology, but ultimately decided not to include it in the executive summary for policymakers in its latest report.
Instead, the world’s top climate scientists concluded “that we know far too little about it (and) that it brings new risks and harms to ecosystems and people,” she added.
“I think the word geoengineering only appears about twice in the Working Group III report and that’s just to say we don’t use the term geoengineering,” Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, said at the same briefing.
“Many of our authors couldn’t bear to use the words solar radiation management and insisted on calling it solar radiation modification because of their aversion to it,” Skea said.
‘Dangerous distraction’
The IPCC Working Group III report, published last April, focused on climate change mitigation and assessed methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
“All we were asked was to look at legal and ethical aspects, which we actually did in our international department,” he added.
Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network, which includes more than 1,500 civil society organizations, said any challenges related to SRM and solar geoengineering should be seen as “dangerous distractions”.
— CNBC’s Catherine Clifford contributed to this report.