Geoengineering: Opportunity or folly?
The technology to shield Earth from sunrays and cut the harmful warming expected in the coming decades is so cheap and readily available that the hurdles to doing it are social, not technical, says Harvard’s David Keith, a supporter of geoengineering. Opponents say the idea would not only drain energy from efforts to address climate change’s causes, but also is loaded with unknown risks and the potential for abuse. The nascent debate over geoengineering as a solution to our accelerating climate problem was aired Monday at the Science Center. In an event co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, the authors of books taking opposing sides made their cases, one offering a scenario in which technology blunts the very worst of warming and buys time for other efforts to take hold, the other describing a future where...