Climate intervention schemes could be undone by geopolitics

And yet a number of senior and significant voices in the scientific academy and policy community continue to speak of the urgency with which solar radiation management research should be pursued. They offer these putative control technologies as another option in the portfolio of climate management strategies, with climate manipulation joining climate change mitigation and climate adaptation in a trinity of strategies available for policymakers. At the very least, it is argued, solar radiation management should be available as a backstop technology if the world finds itself in a climate emergency when a dangerous tipping point needs to be avoided.

But can we imagine a possible scenario under which the decision to proceed to full deployment of solar radiation management might be made? Let us assume the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere had been placed at the top of the list of climate intervention technologies. Let us also assume that the basic operational mechanics of getting aerosols into the optimal layers of the stratosphere for maximum solar shielding had been figured out. One possible scenario might look something like this:

It is January 2028 and the United Kingdom - one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council - puts forward a formal resolution to start the systematic injection of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. The UK’s argument is that with Arctic sea ice extent the previous summer having shrunk to just 25 per cent of its late-20th century value, with monitors in Canadian permafrost identifying increased rates of methane release, and with the explosion at a nuclear reactor in China two years earlier leading to a moratorium on all new nuclear power plant construction, such direct climate remediation measures are called for.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a report for the Security Council on the regional climatic risks of such intervention. Based on the best Earth system models, the IPCC offers probabilistic predictions of the 10-year mean changes in regional rainfall around the world that would result from sustained aerosol injection.

The 15 members of the Security Council argue over the evidence. In particular, they spend much time weighing the probabilities that the Asian monsoon might be weakened as a result. Security Council members also argue about how long the initial aerosol injection should continue - for 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years. Against a background of vociferous, and at times violent, globally-coordinated public campaigns (both in favour and against such intervention), the Security Council votes 11-2 in favour, with 2 abstentions. The deployment will proceed for a one-year period, after which a full evaluation will be conducted.

Over the following months, protestors attempt to sabotage some of the planes being used to inject aerosols, and direct-action groups affiliated with HOME (Hands Off Mother Earth) send up their own aircraft in symbolic efforts to scrub the aerosols from the stratosphere. After one year the deployment is temporarily halted and climate data are evaluated.

Global temperature has indeed fallen from the previous 10-year mean of 15.23º C (the 1961-1990 average was 14º C) to just 14.57º C, the coolest year on the planet since 2014. But regional climate anomalies have been large and variable. Of most concern was a failure of the Asian monsoon, at the cost of $50 billion to the Indian economy, and the most intense cyclone season in the South China Sea for 20 years.

India - one of the rotating members of the Security Council - and China now trigger an emergency debate calling for a permanent ban on deployment of aerosol injection technologies. The IPCC argues that one year’s data prove nothing about the efficacy or impact of solar radiation management. But against a background of further global protests, led by the new popular civic movements in China and India, the Security Council now splits 5-5, with 5 abstentions. Turmoil ensues as two Canadian billionaires unilaterally continue aerosol injection.

Of course one could create a hundred other scenarios under which the story of solar radiation management may unfold. But I use this one to draw attention to the profound political obstacles and humanitarian risks that shadow attempts to engineer the climate through solar radiation management. The organisation HOME already exists, seeking to mobilise people everywhere to tell climate engineers to proceed no further with climate manipulation.

The technical body supporting the work of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has recently proposed a draft text along the following lines: “No climate-related geo-engineering activities [should] take place until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts.” (Emphasis added.)

Words such as “adequate” and “appropriate” offer new grounds for contention in an already argumentative world. If the politics of climate mitigation policy under the guise of the Kyoto Protocol have proved intractable, just wait until we see the geopolitics surrounding the negotiation of the first protocol on engineering synthetic climates. In the name of saving the planet from inadvertent greenhouse-gas exacerbated climate change, climate engineers may simply be offering us one Promethean fire to offset the effects of another.