Governments and research funders must focus on the social and political side of the geoengineering equation, not just the science.
As each year is hotter than the last and climate disasters pile up around the world, interest grows in geoengineering, particularly solar radiation modification (SRM)—techniques designed to cool the planet artificially. In September 2024, the British Advanced Research and Invention Agency announced it would fund new geoengineering research, including outdoor experiments, to the tune of 57 million pounds (approximately $75 million). This effort adds to the growing pot of money from philanthropists and tech entrepreneurs directed toward such research in recent years, including a new program the Environmental Defense Fund began in June 2024.
This funding increase means scientific research into geoengineering techniques is proceeding more quickly than efforts to develop the critical norms and rules of the road needed to manage such research and potential deployments. Meanwhile, disinformation and conspiracy theories infuse debates over geoengineering, while geopolitical tensions hamper cooperative technological approaches. These three dynamics—rapid scientific advancement without governance guardrails, a toxic information environment, and heightened geopolitical competition—portend significant security challenges in the coming decades. Navigating this dangerous mix requires both governments and those funding the scientific research to focus as much—if not more—on the social and political side of the geoengineering equation as on the research component.
The Changing Landscape of Geoengineering Research
In just the past few years, the landscape regarding geoengineering research has evolved significantly. As it has become clearer that the world will struggle to meet the Paris Agreement goal of staying “well below” 2 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial temperatures, the taboo against geoengineering research has begun to erode. Like climate adaptation before, the moral hazard argument against geoengineering research—that societies will not commit to curbing greenhouse gas emissions if they perceive an “easy” out for managing the impacts of climate change—has become less persuasive as climate hazards hit communities more frequently and intensely, and scientists recognize some aspects of climate change are now irreversible. Governments, philanthropists, and research institutions are increasingly exploring the question of what a geoengineering research program should look like. For example, in 2021 the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine argued it was time to create a transdisciplinary geoengineering research program in the United States, focused on developing “policy-relevant knowledge.” In June 2023, a congressionally mandated report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy echoed the academies’ recommendations and articulated a U.S. research program on solar radiation modification, maintaining that such a program would “enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of SRM as a component of climate policy.”
Despite this increased interest in the practice, multilateral institutions and governments have been slow to make progress toward geoengineering governance. At the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi earlier this year, the Swiss government proposed establishing a UN expert group to examine the “risks and opportunities” of solar radiation management, a range of geoengineering approaches meant to reflect sunlight back into space to cool the planet. A separate group led by African nations proposed a ban on all solar radiation management. Neither group succeeded. There is disagreement across the international community regarding which existing forum should tackle geoengineering governance. For example, ahead of COP29, some observers argued that provisions at that meeting regarding carbon removal would contradict the de facto moratorium on geoengineering reaffirmed at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Colombia a few weeks earlier.
Meanwhile, negotiating a wholly new global treaty on geoengineering—which some commentators have recommended—seems unlikely to produce results in a quick or unified enough manner to influence the research environment, particularly without U.S. leadership. As a comparison, take the Montreal Protocol, which phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances and is widely (and rightly) held up as a model of successful international environmental negotiation. The risk posed by CFCs to the ozone layer was first studied by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in 1974, and President Carter raised the alarm in the United States in 1980. Negotiations to ban the substance began at the UN, and the eventual protocol was signed in 1987—13 years after the initial UNEP report—with the backing of a unified group of powerful countries, led by the United States.
In contrast, the first UNEP study on geoengineering was released in just 2023, and the geopolitics, urgency of climate hazards, and commercial landscape are significantly different. The CFC problem was far more straightforward than climate intervention. It aimed to replace a narrow set of industrial substances with commercially available substitutes, not modify the Earth’s climate using theoretical technology with unclear ecological consequences, to counteract warming caused by the entire global economy. It is possible that the process of negotiations on a treaty would be beneficial in developing global norms and a shared baseline understanding of the technologies. Still, it’s highly unlikely that the process would pause or slow geoengineering research, leaving a governance gap.
Further complicating the picture is the lack of public understanding and knowledge about geoengineering, combined with disinformation and conspiracy theories about the potential technology and existing weather modification techniques. For example, a wave of state legislatures in the United States have passed or are considering bans on geoengineering, combining discussions of cooling the planet with unfounded conspiracy theories about the connection between such technology and chemtrails. Earlier this year, extreme flooding in Brazil, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, and Zimbabwe was erroneously attributed to cloud seeding in those countries. A conservative U.S. social media influencer said this about flooding in Dubai: “I’ve seen some blaming climate change when the cause is actually from the use of weather modification. Cloud seeding where chemicals are sprayed in clouds to create rain caused this.” Such stories preview the kinds of tensions and challenges that will arise if geoengineering research and deployment is not accompanied by thoughtful governance and communications approaches.
On the geopolitical front, increasing tensions along multiple axes (for example, the United States vs. China, Global North vs. Global South), coupled with a rise in gray zone or hybrid warfare tactics and historical fears of “weather weapons,” create a fraught atmosphere for international collaboration on geoengineering guardrails. These factors also increase the likelihood of countries’ suspicions and misperceptions regarding other nations’ efforts toward SRM research and testing. For example, as we noted last year, Iranian politicians regularly claim Israel and other “enemies” are “stealing” Iran’s precipitation and causing drought, while a Chinese disinformation campaign falsely attributed the 2023 Maui wildfires to a U.S. “weather weapon.”
Unfortunately, some actors pursuing geoengineering efforts are not considering or prioritizing these challenges. Earlier this year, a group of scientists from the University of Washington launched a test of marine cloud brightening (a less controversial geoengineering technique to inject salt spray into clouds to increase their reflectivity) from a decommissioned aircraft carrier on the California coast near Alameda. A few weeks later, the Alameda City Council decided to shut down further tests—it turns out they were not made aware of the details of the experiment before it launched. Though there was no legal requirement for the project to inform the city council of its actions, any political or social scientist could tell you that robust engagement ahead of a test of unknown and misunderstood technology would pay dividends down the road. However, some observers have taken the wrong lesson from pushback against their efforts. After public opposition stymied prominent geoengineering proponent David Keith’s efforts to launch a preliminary geoengineering test in Sweden in 2021, he said, “A lesson I’ve learned from this is that if we do this again, we won’t be open in the same way.”
The irony is that a closed approach to geoengineering research that fails to engage communities or work to address social and political challenges harms the cause of even proponents of geoengineering as a responsible global tool against dangerous warming. We live in a moment of growing distrust in government and science, coupled with a fraught geopolitical environment. Organizations and institutions that fund scientific research on geoengineering should pay as much attention to the development of guardrails and norms that manage not only the scientific challenges but also the sociopolitical and geopolitical risks associated with both the reality and perception of geoengineering. Without such attention, responsible research programs will be sidelined and slowed, as in Alameda.
In this setting, ad hoc and commodified private-sector initiatives will likely take advantage of the gap between a geoengineering prohibition and a deliberate, well-coordinated climate intervention. Profit-motivated tinkering with Earth’s atmosphere risks undermining legitimate research into geoengineering and threatens to feed geopolitical tensions and misinformation, a worldwide example of privatized gain and socialized risk. In 2023, a Silicon Valley startup pursued unauthorized solar geoengineering efforts in Mexico to monetize dubious “cooling credits,” which triggered a Mexican ban, and the company continues to conduct experiments in the United States. Meanwhile, a new U.S.-Israeli startup sees promising business potential in developing geoengineering techniques to sell to governments. These efforts underscore that in the absence of greater consensus or regulation, the world is not holding off on geoengineering, but backing its way into it.
A Path Forward
As we wrote earlier this year, governments, particularly the United States and the U.K.—where much of the research originates—have a responsibility to lead the development of a framework to ensure that research and potential testing is conducted transparently, led by civilian institutions and agencies, and integrates political, sociological, and historical viewpoints. In building a unified, cross-government position on geoengineering research and governance, the United States should learn from weather modification controversies in the 1960s and 1970s , nuclear non-proliferation negotiations, and the development of bioethics—all of which offer lessons regarding norm building for complex, nascent technologies. While global unanimity is ideal, given the multilateral challenges outlined above, the United States should also work in parallel to forge consensus with key powers in a “minilateral” fashion. It’s especially important for Washington to develop a shared position with key allies such as the U.K. and EU, to ensure constructive engagement and greater likelihood of success toward developing rules of the road that are adopted widely. The U.S., U.K., and EU should also work together to develop a strategy for engaging China—which has an interest in avoiding chaotic geoengineering—and would be essential to establishing workable global norms.
Governments, philanthropists, and researchers must also develop and fund robust science communication and science diplomacy to engage the public, the private sector, and other governments on geoengineering in the coming years. This engagement could include educational workshops for lawmakers, national security professionals, as well as a heavy dose of state and local policymakers, who are likely to increasingly consider banning, regulating, or enabling geoengineering research and experimentation. The trials and tribulations of efforts to counter vaccine skepticism, election denial, and other challenges at the crossroads of science, communication, and misinformation show that the role of social dynamics, emotion, and polarization are critical. So far, however, work by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Defense Science Board have focused largely on technical uncertainties rather than the societal and political risks of geoengineering forays that are already unfolding.
It is clear that the increasing pace and intensity of climate hazards are resulting in significant suffering around the globe, contributing to instability and conflict. Governments are increasingly challenged to manage and respond to such risks. In this context, expecting governments to refrain from even discussing geoengineering in the coming decades is unrealistic. Putting our heads in the sand about that reality is harmful and is more likely to result in chaotic and dangerous forays into geoengineering by uncoordinated and unregulated actors than none at all. With scientists, businesses, and nonprofits already backing their way into the Pandora’s box of geoengineering, governments should establish more proactive regulation and guardrails to manage the social and political risks, not just the scientific ones.
– Erin Sikorsky, Tom Ellison, Published courtesy of Lawfare.
