As climate risks increase, will geoengineering become a safer alternative?

With fires, storms, record-breaking temperatures and changes in the natural environment, there is growing evidence that our earth’s systems are becoming increasingly unstable. This has potentially catastrophic consequences.

New technologies may one day pull the greenhouse
gases from the atmosphere. But at what cost?

Public debate often places climate risks in the context of "this century" or "by 2100". But scientists are increasingly highlighting the risks of devastating and irreversible impacts in just 20 or 30 years. This is within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children’s.

These risks include:

Loss of nearly all corals, which support 25% of all ocean life (as documented in the recent film Chasing Coral)

Collapsing ice sheets, which will raise sea-levels, devastating coastal cities and low-lying countries

Warming oceans, which energize storms (to category 6 and higher), with damage that includes breaches of coastal nuclear reactors

Warming of the planet, caused by the greenhouse effect, is the primary stressor of many of these environmental challenges. Carbon dioxide and other pollutants present further complications, such as increasing ocean acidification.

Read the World Economic Forum story - “As climate risks increase, will geoengineering become a safer alternative?”