Ban solar geoengineering

We have grown up in a world where climate change is apparent everywhere. We see it in our stormy skies and in the floodwaters inundating our communities. We feel it in our throats and lungs when we inhale polluted air, and on our skin as we walk down the street during heat waves. World leaders would convene every year to make decisions and deals, compromises and commitments, always falling far short of delivering what was needed to mitigate and, increasingly, to adapt to climate change. This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) was no exception.All this inertia has spurred some to try to find a way around the hard work of ending harmful greenhouse-gas emissions, protecting critical ecosystems, and rethinking economic growth and development. One proposed "solution”, being pushed by a small but vocal minority in the Global North, is solar geoengineering, which involves modifying Earth’s atmosphere to create a reflective barrier against the sun’s radiation. For today’s youth and future generations, however, such interventions threaten to be as catastrophic as climate change.Solar geoengineering can take many forms, including the release of huge amounts of sulphur particles into the stratosphere to create a reflective barrier against sunlight (stratospheric aerosol injection) and the injection of salt spray into shallow marine clouds (marine cloud brightening). But it never addresses the root causes of the climate crisis, and it involves modifying our planet’s atmosphere in ways that cannot be adequately tested at scale, with effects that will last decades or longer.Geoengineering research has always been controversial for precisely these reasons. Countless scientists and experts have warned that the approach could cause far-reaching unintended consequences. Studies show, for example, that it could disrupt climate and weather patterns, leading to severe droughts, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. These risks are unpredictable, and their effects would be unequally distributed.In fact, solar geoengineering would amplify existing global power imbalances, not least because decisions about its deployment would be made primarily by rich countries in the Global North – the same countries that created the climate crisis. These countries nurtured a deadly phenomenon, the burden of which is falling disproportionately on vulnerable communities, and now they propose a highly risky strategy that, even in the best-case scenario, would not solve the problem.None of these objections has prevented millions of dollars from being funnelled – largely by tech and finance billionaires – into solar geoengineering initiatives. Proponents suggest that such initiatives are a temporary fix, a way to buy more time for mitigation and adaptation. To us, such statements sound like dangerous castles in the air – appealing but illusory.It is far more likely that solar geoengineering would provide an excuse for the world’s major emitters not to end their fossil-fuel addiction. This compounds the threat of a "termination shock”: if solar-geoengineering efforts were abruptly halted, rapid warming would ensue. Future generations – including today’s young people – would thus have to confront dangerous spikes in temperature and far more acute crises than those we face now.If nothing else, we will be the ones footing the bill for the economic and societal transformation that climate change demands – a transformation that is not receiving adequate investment today. Advocates of solar geoengineering like to frame it as a "cheap” solution, but diverting resources from initiatives that we know work – and do not risk the health of our planet – cannot possibly be considered sound financial management. Instead, it amounts to offloading the hard work of addressing the carbon debt onto our generation and those that follow us.That is why a full ban on solar geoengineering is in order. More than 2,000 civil-society organisations, including Fridays For Future, and over 540 academics have called for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering. Countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, such as Vanuatu and others, have similarly opposed the use of such technologies.Some loud – and, no doubt, well-funded – voices might accuse opponents of being closed-minded, suggesting that we should be more willing to engage in dialogue on the topic. But this is merely a ploy to dismiss a position backed by ample research. The small group of well-funded young individuals advocating research into solar geoengineering are often connected to organisations known for promoting these controversial technologies, raising the suspicion that they are being co-opted to give solar geoengineering the guise of youth support.The last thing young people need is to be left shouldering the responsibility of yet another crisis we did not create. But that is precisely what solar geoengineering would most likely mean. Pursuing it amounts to a profound generational betrayal.