The emergency framing of solar geoengineering: Time for a different approach

Abstract

Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a possible response measure in the event of a ‘climate emergency’. Scientific evidence for climate emergencies in the form of tipping points, however, is contested and unsettled. Furthermore, declarations of emergency entail authoritarian political tendencies that historically have given rise to repression and abuse. By definition, an emergency must exhibit a combination of high risk, urgency and necessity; no plausible climatic tipping point displays all these attributes simultaneously. A weak scientific basis together with genuine societal peril argues against the continued emergency framing of solar geoengineering.