The Dangers of Geoengineering as a Response to Climate Change

Recent years have seen the rapid growth of geoengineering proposals designed to manipulate Earth’s systems at a global scale in an effort to slow global warming. Framed as a possible last-ditch response to climate change, geoengineering approaches range from injecting megatons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, to every container ship in the world releasing alkaline limestone in its wake to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This panel of experts will lay out the current science and politics of solar and marine geoengineering and discuss the extraordinary risks associated with various geoengineering technologies. Attendees will learn more about how international treaties and federal governments are (or aren’t) stepping in to regulate geoengineering experiments, and engage with panelists in a discussion about how the environmental movement, policy makers, funders, and advocates react to the proliferation of geoengineering proposals and open-air experiments.

Speakers:

• Benjamin Day, Senior Campaigner for Climate & Energy Justice, Friends of the Earth U.S.
• Panganga Pungowiyi, Climate Geoengineering Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network
• James Kerry, PhD, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University
• Mary Church, Geoengineering Campaign Manager, Center for International Environmental Law
• Aarti Gupta, PhD, Professor of Global Environmental Governance, Wageningen University, the Netherlands