A task force from the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released a report earlier this month urging a coordinated government effort to research the “potential effectiveness, feasibility, and consequences of climate remediation technologies”.
Climate remediation is defined as techniques and processes “intentionally deployed to counter the climate effects of past greenhouse gas emissions on the atmosphere”. Such techniques may include anything from simply planting more trees to absorb carbon to large-scale geoengineering methods such as “fertilizing” the ocean with iron (referred to as carbon dioxide removal or CDR technologies) or introducing aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation back into space (referred to as solar radiation management or SRM).
Made up of experts and leaders in climate science, social science, science and foreign policy, national security, and environmental advocacy, the Task Force on Climate Remediation was emphatic in its report that “it is far too premature to contemplate deployment of any climate remediation technology.”
The purpose of climate remediation research should be, according to the report, “to protect the public and the environment from both the potential impacts of climate change and from the potentially damaging impacts of climate remediation technologies.
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Geo-engineering has received a bad rap over the last decade as radical ideas get mixed reviews on the scientific stage. For those not familiar, geo-engineering is a term used to describe a combination of technology, innovation and environmentalism aimed at changing the trajectory of climate change.
