Behind closed doors, the politics of solar geoengineering are shifting

Por Corbin Hiar — POLITICO – TOP Stories

Policymakers in the U.S. and European Union are considering technologies that limit sunlight as a potential tool to curb global warming — even if they’re not yet willing to publicly say so, two former government insiders said Friday.

The potential acceptance of solar geoengineering has been enabled in part by some mainstream environmental groups and climate policy leaders, which have begun openly calling for more research of sunlight-reflecting technologies, said Cynthia Scharf, who previously served as head of strategic climate communications for the United Nations secretary-general.

These kinds of technologies were once considered taboo by most environmentalists because of their potential to harm the ozone layer, alter weather patterns and trigger geopolitical conflict. They also do nothing to reduce the main drivers of warming: the burning of oil, gas and coal.

But with the surge of Silicon Valley investment into solar geoengineering startups like Stardust Solutions, the prospect of limiting sunlight has moved from theoretical to possible, said Scharf, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Future Generations, a Brussels-based think tank.

“That conversation is shifting — shifting mostly behind closed doors,” she said at a solar geoengineering workshop in Washington organized by the environmental group Resources for the Future and Harvard University.

The growing interest in solar geoengineering from environmentalists, venture capitalists and politicians comes as global temperatures soar to new heights and multilateral efforts to limit warming have faltered. Investors in Stardust and other startups are betting that the world will soon become so unbearably hot that governments will pay for access to sunlight-blocking technologies.

Interest in reflective technologies is already coming from “places like agricultural ministries, trade ministries, ministries of foreign affairs, and ministries of defense,” Scharf said. “And I think that’s healthy because [solar geoengineering] is an everything issue, it’s not just a climate issue.”

The same dynamic is playing out in U.S. states, said Craig Segall, the former deputy leader of the California Air Resources Board.

“I spend a lot of time talking to state agencies and electeds. People know that we’re in trouble. They need new approaches,” said Segall, who is now a senior director at the Climate Hub environmental group.

In Washington, many members of Congress “are curious about this, looking for ways to support core U.S. government capacity and looking for ways to engage in a deep way,” he added.

So far, the interest is largely limited to politicians on the left of the political spectrum, he said.

In the Trump administration, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spoken out in favor of state-level bans on solar geoengineering research. Members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which rejects the scientific consensus of man-made climate change, have also repeatedly raised concerns about sunlight-reflection efforts.

But Scharf believes conservative populists could rush to embrace solar geoengineering without fully considering the risks associated with the technologies or the political trade-offs needed to deploy them.

“I’m concerned that this might be seized upon in a crisis, or a wave of crises, as one way to cope with an uncontrollable future,” she said. “It slides into authoritarianism quite quickly.”

One way to avoid that potential outcome, said Scharf and other panelists, is to ramp up efforts to establish international ground rules for solar geoengineering.

If President Donald Trump decided he wanted to begin reflecting sunlight, “I think tomorrow or next week we could be heading to deployment,” said Portia Adade Williams, a research scientist with Ghana’s state-run Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. “So as the discussions keep going up, I think the governance space is becoming as important as the science.”

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories