People photographed in Lower Saxony, Germany, on July 19, 2022. A number of European countries were affected by a heatwave last month.
Julian Stratenschulte | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Global efforts to respond to climate change are so far insufficient, making it time to begin studying technologies to reflect sunlight away from the Earth to cool it down temporarily, said a new report from the United Nations published on Monday.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to permanently slow global warming, but worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are currently “not on track to meet the 1.5° Celsius Paris Agreement goal,” the U.N. Environment Program said in a written statement accompanying the release of the report.
With the world not responding to climate change urgently enough, a “speculative group of technologies” to reflect sunlight back away from the Earth have been getting more attention recently, UNEP said in a written statement accompanying the report. This category of technologies is often called solar radiation modification (SRM) or more broadly solar geoengineering.
The report on these technologies, written by an expert panel brought together by the U.N. program, advised that it’s currently not a good idea to use them in an effort to respond to climate change.
However, “this view may change if climate action remains insufficient,” the report said, signaling that it’s time for rigorous study of both the technologies and the potential international governance.
A similar message came from a group of more than 60 scientists in an open letter that was also (coincidentally) published on Monday.
Fast and doable, but potentially dangerous
Solar geoengineering “is the only known approach that could be used to cool the Earth within a few years,” the U.N. report said, and would cost tens of billions of dollars per year per degree of cooling.
While the technology to inject large quantities of aerosols into the upper atmosphere does not exist…
Read the full article here
