How extreme weather fuels interest in geoengineering
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Pakistani politician Hina Rabbani Khar remembers the horrific 2022 floods in her country as a turning point in the debate over climate change — and to what extent the practice of solar geoengineering should be considered.
Why it matters: Solar geoengineering — reflecting a small portion of the Sun's rays back into space to temporarily cool the planet — is increasingly being considered as climate change worsens extreme weather.
- Once dismissed as science fiction, it's a technology that divides scientists and provokes conspiracy theories online.
Flashback: Three years ago, some Pakistani provinces saw more than 500% the normal annual rainfall. By September, one-third of the country's land was underwater, and 33 million people were directly impacted.
- In a peer-reviewed report released this summer, scientists said climate change made the flooding worse.
What they're saying: "The number that really stuck with me — as a mother of three children — was that during this time when people were homeless and didn't even have the shelter of a tent, let alone a home, there were 600,000 women who were going through different stages of childbirth," Khar told Axios for a new episode of the "Shocked" podcast airing Monday.
How it works: Solar geoengineering would involve intentionally injecting particles of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back into space and temporarily cool the Earth's surface.
- Put simply, it does what a volcano does naturally. Put even more simply, it does on a grander scale what clouds do on a hot day: make it feel less hot.
Where it stands: The technology isn't currently being deployed, but Khar was part of a global consortium that began studying the issue the same year as the floods.
- "I will happily admit that I am a convert on the question of exploring and researching geoengineering," Khar told me, emphasizing that she does not yet support actually deploying it.
The intrigue: Scientists are deep into research on the topic.
- A peer-reviewed article earlier this year quantified the risks and found more people would die because of the heat from unabated climate change than would die from any additional pollution caused by deploying the sulfur dioxide into the sky.
- Another peer-reviewed article this month concluded that deploying geoengineering in the Arctic and Antarctica would lead to more environmental problems, be too expensive and struggle to achieve international agreement.
Between the lines: Putting science aside, perhaps the highest-level concern is that deploying this technology could make oil companies, nations and others less inclined to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — a concern known as the "moral hazard" argument.
- "It is likely that fossil-rich nations or fossil-fuel companies will at some point choose to exaggerate how well solar geoengineering is working, or could work, in order to reduce the political pressure to cut emissions," said David Keith, a University of Chicago professor who's among the world's leading experts on this topic.
But he said that shouldn't stop consideration of the technology, particularly for lower-income nations like Pakistan.
- "The idea that we should not allow them [lower-income nations] to reduce their harms because we want more moral pressure on the rich in the oil companies is just ethically insane," said Keith, who's researching these topics as founding faculty director of the university's Climate Systems Engineering Initiative.
The big picture: Efforts to address climate change have taken a distant back seat to two physical wars, a global trade war and the world's historical superpower — the U.S. — reeling from multiple bouts of political violence within its own borders.
My thought bubble: Such a chaotic world that isn't aggressively addressing climate change could increase the chances of nations individually pursuing solar geoengineering as a stopgap measure that's relatively affordable and easy.
What's next: A House subcommittee is holding a hearing Tuesday on these technologies, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R.-Ga.), who recently introduced a bill that would ban geoengineering and similar types of tech.
Editor's note: This article was written partly based on content from the podcast, which was created by a team that includes experts at the University of Chicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth and producers at Magnificent Noise. Amy is the institute's inaugural journalism fellow.
