Richard Heinberg | How to Build a Climate Bomb

Richard Heinberg highlights the risks and false promises of solar geoengineering in his new piece “How to Build a Climate Bomb” in Resilience:

Maybe I’m wrong about that. Perhaps there’s only a ten percent risk of a geoengineering failure resulting in a sudden global warming rebound. But it’s a risk that would entail global heating of a speed and magnitude that would be both unprecedented and terrifying.

What’s really needed to reduce climate risk is a coordinated effort to greatly shrink humanity’s overall energy usage and material consumption, along with massive investments in nature-based carbon removal. If world leaders continue to fail to mount that effort and make those investments, will they eventually turn to solar radiation geoengineering as an alternative solution, because it’s cheaper and doesn’t involve as much perceived sacrifice? We’d better hope not, because it would be an epically, apocalyptically horrible idea.

Finally, here’s the good news. Solar geoengineering is still in the category of bad things that aren’t happening, but might. This means that, with more public awareness, it could be prevented.