BPC panelists, ensuring the U.S. is ready if remedial action is required

Although members are quoted saying such things as “the idea of engineering the planet is ‘fundamentally shocking’ and “we might get desperate enough to want to use it,” a task force of scientists, former government officials and national security experts was convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center to discuss techniques of climate remediation, or geoengineering. In the absence of political will to address the causes of climate change, advocates of directly manipulating the Earth’s climate to lower its temperature are urging the United States undertake research into the feasibility, cost, effectiveness and potential consequences of technologies such as solar radiation management and atmospheric carbon dioxide removal.

According to the U.S. General Accountability Office, “major uncertainties remain on the efficacy and potential consequences” of geoengineering techniques.”Nonetheless, the GAO recommends that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy “establish a clear strategy for geoengineering research.”

In its report, the BPC task force addressed myriad policy issues arising from the idea of taking intentional actions to counter the climate effects of past greenhouse gas emissions.

Some task force members expressed the hope that even just the consideration of such radical measures as solar radiation management would jolt the political environment into acting to curb the emission of greenhouse gases.

Many describe such ideas as misguided and potentially dangerous, cautioning that the cure could be worse than the disease. Joe Romm, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and Climate Progress blogger, likens it to “a dangerous course of chemotherapy and radiation to treat a condition curable through diet and exercise.” Dr. Ken Caldeira, professor of global ecology at Stanford University, cautions such measures could upset the Earth’s natural rhythms. “The real question is what are the unkown unknowns,” says Dr. Caldeira. “Are you creating more risk than you are alleviating?”