Paris climate agreement may force geoengioneering move

Geoengineering may have to move from the fringes of the climate debate towards the mainstream if the world is to meet the climate targets included in the Paris Climate Agreement, say some policy analysts and scientists.

At the rate that the world is burning coal, gas and oil, even rapid adoption of low carbon technologies might not keep warming within 1.5C, while the 2C target, also included in the agreement, looks even further out of reach.    

But geoengineering is dangerous stuff – it involves countering climate change by manipulating the planet’s weather without being able to guarantee or calibrate the outcomes. Even leading researchers who spend their lives working on the concept acknowledge that these technologies could have huge unintended, and harmful, consequences.

Read the China Dialogue story - “World would likely need geoengineering to meet Paris targets, but what are the risks?”

(Man, it could be argued has been party to geoengineering ever since he/she first began to plod about the planet.

True or not, the human influence on the world’s weather became influential and measurable with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th Century and in recent decades that change has become noticeable, even for the doubters, with extreme weather events around the world.

It’s human behaviour, primarily our voracious appetite for fossil-fuel created energy, that has worsened the damage inflicted on Earth’s climate system and now the technophiles among us are clamouring for us to innovate our way out of this dilemma using geoengineering.

However, as Olivia Boyd points out in the China Dialogue story “geoengineering is dangerous stuff”; dangerous for it may well bring unintended consequences leaving the Earth or at least humanity, in a situation far worse than that now unfolding – Robert McLean.)