Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12646 |
| Author | Marco Grasso |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry
into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering
Marco Grasso
Universit
a degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Abstract
Solar geoengineering (SG) is considered a promising, albeit controversial, climate engineering technology to help reduce pre-
dicted global warming. However, the complexity of SG raises serious doubts about its political practicability. The objective of
this article is to investigate this technology’s feasibility, a fundamental dimension of said practicability. Feasibility is here
understood as a political property: the higher the feasibility of a state of affairs ranks, the greater its eventual political practica-
bility. According to this perspective, the less SG clashes with economic, institutional, and moral soft constraints, the more fea-
sible it becomes, and hence the greater its political practicability. An analysis of economic and institutional soft constraints
points to a high degree of SG feasibility. This feasibility is, however, limited by the perceived non-bearable moral costs which
SG involves. Given the greater weight of moral soft constraints, SG’s overall feasibility is therefore low. Based on these indica-
tions, the article offers suggestions for lessening SG’s friction with soft constraints, especially with the highly sensitive moral
ones, with the aim of increasing this technology’s feasibility. On the basis of this heightened feasibility, the paper concludes
with policy recommendations which improves the practicability of SG.
Policy Implications
•Particular attention should be paid to the many ethical concerns raised by solar geoengineering (SG) since these greatly
limit its feasibility.
•In order to improve SG feasibility its governance should consider concerns about legitimacy and procedural justice.
•To obtain SG politically practicability it is crucial to: (1) improve the overall morality of its governance; (2) include intergen-
erational and international distributive justice in its governance; and (3) carry out this technology in a context of interna-
tional trust and widespread collaboration.
•Existing international institutions working on climate change, science and education, environmental issues, justice, peace
and security, development, international law, health and nutrition and financial matters should be leveraged for support-
ing the feasibility and political practicability of SG.
•Coordination is necessary at the regional scale between said international institutions and states, the relevant national and
sub-national institutions and the appropriate formal and informal governance mechanisms.
Spraying diamond dust in the sky
Scientists at Harvard University have suggested that spray-
ing diamond dust in the sky could lower temperatures on
Earth (Weisenstein et al., 2015). Diamond dust is one of the
many particles –the most common one is sulfate aerosol –
that can be dispersed in the stratosphere in order to cool
temperatures on a global scale (Caldeira et al., 2013). This
seemingly fantastic proposal referred to as ‘stratospheric
aerosol injection’, is possibly the most promising approach
in the solar geoengineering (SG) family of technologies of
climate engineering (CE) (Niemeier and Tilmes, 2017). CE,
also known as ‘geoengineering’or ‘climate intervention’was
loosely defined in one of the first major works on the sub-
ject by the UK Royal Society as ‘the deliberate, large-scale
manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract
anthropogenic climate change’(Shepherd, 2009, p. 1).
Indeed, climate change is already happening and the evi-
dence suggests that political, economic and social inertia
will very likely prevent emissions being reduced fast enough
to avoid further dangerous climate impacts (National
Research Council, 2015a, 2015b; Sch€
afer et al., 2015). At the
same time, although the nationally determined contribu-
tions, part of the 2015 Paris Agreement testify to an
unprecedented global scale of climate initiatives, they do
not set sufficient emission cuts for achieving the goal of
safely limiting the rise in global temperatures (Peters et al.,
2017).
This bleak outlook has led to the increased contemplation
of a range of CE technologies which are emerging as a third
category of possible responses to climate change, alongside
reducing emissions (mitigation) and modifying socioeco-
nomic systems for lessening climate impacts (adaptation)
(National Research Council, 2015a, 2015b; Niemeier and
Global Policy (2019) 10:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12646 ©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue 2 . May 2019 217
Research Article
To continue reading
Request your trial