Putting Mirrors in Space Is a Dangerous Climate Distraction
Reflecting sunlight away from the Earth may mask the damage caused by global warming, but it won’t address the causes.
Reflecting the sun’s heat away from Earth may mask the damage of climate change but won’t address the causes.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North AmericaWhen it comes to the climate crisis, what’s a realistic path forward? Continuing to deploy renewables at breakneck speed? Or relying blindly on technologies to reflect the sun’s heat away from the planet? A few prominent voices in the climate space seem to believe the latter choice — solar geoengineering — is now our best option. This interpretation is at best, bleak, and at worst, dangerous.
Varun Sivaram, senior fellow for energy and climate at the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations, launched a “Climate Realism Initiative” earlier this month. In an essay introducing the concept, Sivaram writes that the world’s climate targets are unachievable, that the clean-energy transition carries “serious risks” for US interests and that US emissions don’t matter to the trajectory of climate change.