An envi­ron­men­tal case for solar geoengineering

The com­bi­na­tion of iner­tia and uncer­tainty makes the cou­pled climate-human sys­tem dan­ger­ously hard to con­trol. Emis­sions cuts are nec­es­sary to man­age cli­mate risks, but they are not nec­es­sar­ily suf­fi­cient. I will argue for a broad solar geo­engi­neer­ing research program–from lab­o­ra­tory to out­door field experiments–that aims to develop new tech­nolo­gies that can limit cli­mate risks while min­i­miz­ing side effects. I will show new results on human health impacts and on the use of solid arti­fi­cial aerosols in the stratos­phere. Finally, I will dis­cuss the pub­lic pol­icy of deploy­ment sug­gest­ing strate­gies that are mod­er­ate, tem­po­rary and responsive.

SPEAKER: Dr. David Keith, Gor­don McKay Pro­fes­sor of Applied Physics and Pro­fes­sor of Pub­lic Pol­icy (HKS), Har­vard University