¿Can geoengineering solve climate change?

Geoengineering pretends to fight climate change by releasing particles that reflect solar radiation.
Source: gwagner.com/wsj-sg/

Climate change is the result of activities that make up our economy, such as energy generation, agriculture, metallurgy, cement production, and more. It is important to recognize that Mexico’s industrial development has led to a radical improvement in our standard of living over the last century. For example, Cuautitlán Izcalli, a suburb of Mexico City, is the 40th municipality out of 2,479 in terms of economic activity, of which only 3% is agricultural, making the municipality predominantly industrial and an important pillar of the national economy.

However, the stagnation of living standards in recent decades and the recent increase in extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Otis, are showing us that the current dependence on fossil fuels is unsustainable and that the transition to a sustainable economy is happening at too slow a pace. The average temperature in Izcalli has risen by 1.5°C due to human activities, more than the global average of 1.3°C, and by 2100 it could rise by 3.1°C if we do not increase our ambition to combat climate change.

The lack of action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions has inspired the search for other means of reducing global temperatures. Geoengineering encompasses a series of proposals for large-scale international intervention to counteract climate change without having to reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from our economic activities. The most studied geoengineering measure is the modification of solar radiation by injecting stratospheric aerosols that reflect solar radiation. After a large volcanic eruption, such as Pinatubo in 1991, global temperatures drop by about 1°C for a year or two. If we could continuously emulate these phenomena, we could counteract the impact of greenhouse gases.

However, there are ethical dilemmas surrounding the potential implementation of geoengineering due to the possible existence of negative side effects, some of which we are aware of, such as a sharp local and differentiated reduction in precipitation or solar energy generation, as well as others that we do not yet know about. Furthermore, geoengineering appears to be economical enough for a single country or a billionaire to decide to ignore multilateral organizations such as the UN and begin to apply these measures, especially ignoring the opinion of countries in the Global South such as Mexico. This goes hand in hand with the possibility of a sudden termination due to geopolitical or economic changes or the emergence of risks, and the consequent sudden climate change, an effect known as termination shock.

There is also some controversy regarding the relevance of conducting research, even if its theoretical, on such measures. In Mexico, there have already been controversies in this regard. In April 2022, the US company Make Sunsets released two weather balloons filled with sulfur dioxide in Tijuana, northwestern Mexico, to test the effectiveness of geoengineering. The unilateral test by a private company without any kind of permission triggered a series of global condemnations and calls for a ban on such experiments; even SEMARNAT (Mexico’s environmental ministry) announced that it would implement regulations and standards to control this practice, although so far there has been no major regulatory progress.

At present, the best strategy for combating climate change is a rapid decarbonization of the economy, transitioning to renewable energy, electromobility, and more sustainable food systems. However, we should not deny ourselves the possibility of knowing that other tools are available to us, such as geoengineering, and of studying the risks we face if we are forced to take such measures.

Article translated from Spanish with DeepL, proofread by a human

Article published originally in Spanish in the Izcalli Times