Geoengineering the Climate Could Harm the Planet, U.N. Fears

Geoengineering the Climate Could Pose a New Risk to the Planet, U.N. Fears

By Sara Schonhardt & E&E News

CLIMATEWIRE | The United Nations warned that some efforts to address climate change can carry their own risks to the planet.

Those include carbon offsets and cloud-altering experiments, which the U.N. said in a new report could lead to financial corruption and destabilized weather patterns if they’re not fully understood and managed responsibly.

“The disruptions presented in this report are not guaranteed to happen. But they could happen. We need to be ready,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, writes in the forward of the report.

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It looks at eight major shifts globally, including the rapid development of technologies like artificial intelligence, forced displacement of people, competition for natural resources and the rise of misinformation. The report also points to geoengineering experiments such as solar radiation modification, and the use of carbon offsets as areas that could create more problems than solutions when addressing rising temperatures.

It notes that many of those shifts are increasingly colliding, with the potential to have major environmental consequences.

“The triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste is feeding into human crises such as conflict for territory and resources, displacement and deteriorating health,” the report states, pointing to the widespread effects of the Covid pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

It’s part of what officials call U.N. 2.0, an effort to build a modern organization that’s better equipped to support a series of development goals centered on climate, health and education that are often interlinked.

The report — “Navigating New Horizons: a global foresight report on planetary health and human well being” — was produced by UNEP and the International Science Council, a global coalition of scientific groups, based on input from hundreds of experts and consultations.

The impetus was straightforward: Assess the emerging challenges that could disrupt the U.N.’s work and determine how to get ahead of them, said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist at UNEP and an author of the report.

“One of the benefits of foresight is that you necessarily look at a wide range of issues from different perspectives, and this enables us to join up more effectively,” she noted.

New fields like solar radiation modification, or SRM, that some see as offering potential solutions to global warming could also produce harmful side effects. The concept, which involves shooting substances into the sky to reflect sunlight away from the Earth, is controversial in part because it could alter weather patterns and wouldn’t address the main causes of climate change.

“Recognizing that SRM technologies remain speculative and highly contentious, scientific scrutiny and more inclusive public discourse on the implications [including ethical issues] of SRM is critical at this stage,” the report states. “Choosing to ignore SRM altogether at this stage, could carry its own risks—leaving society and decision-makers ill-prepared and potentially misguided.”

A draft resolution on the concept was withdrawn at the U.N. Environment Assembly earlier this year after nations failed to reach an agreement on how to approach the issue. The report says that detractors and proponents of the concept are emphasizing the need for governance over it but warns that “pressure for a ‘quick fix’ to climate-related problems” is likely to rise as temperatures do.

Another potential risk is the rising demand for minerals used in clean energy technology, which is expected to increase fourfold over the next 15 years. That pressure could fuel conflicts over land and sea, harming indigenous communities and sensitive environments along the ocean floor.

The authors said they didn’t try to offer predictions, but instead highlighted signals of potential trends that could be prevented by governments.

Hinwood said the risks could be decreased if nations continue to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As Arctic permafrost melts due to rising temperatures, for example, it could release ancient microbes that prove lethal to humans and animals.

Some of the signals are mixed. One identifies a growing attention to locally driven resilience. That indicates that governments, under increasing pressure to respond to disasters with limited resources, are forcing local communities to pick up the slack. But it also shows that grassroots networks can play an important role in addressing environmental challenges.

The report comes two months before the U.N. hosts its Summit of the Future in New York, which will focus on meeting global commitments and devising ways to respond to emerging challenges. One of its recommendations is for governments to come up with shorter-term targets that allow them to more easily measure whether they’re achieving their climate objectives.

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.