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One does not need to like solar geoengineering to take the idea seriously. I don’t like it. The mere thought of it is scary, as I believe it should be. Somebody somewhere will surely find a way to abuse it. Conceptually, as a foil for ambitious CO₂ cuts, people already have. In 2008, at the height of the most significant U.S. federal climate policy push to that date, Newt Gingrich wrote an op-ed saying how solar geoengineering shows that we don’t need to cut CO₂ emissions.¹⁴ If only.

I remember shaking hands with David Keith on Saturday, December 12, 2015 in my living room in Cambridge, MA, agreeing to work on what would turn into Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program. The day is significant for indeed a much more significant reason. It was the same day that the Paris Climate Agreement was gaveled into place across the Atlantic. The irony of the moment was not lost on either of us.

The Paris Agreement has been widely hailed for breathing new life into sluggish global climate negotiations. Nobody thought it would solve climate change. Nothing can, by itself. But the Agreement clearly did show some momentum in the right direction and, after a four-year hiatus here in the United States, the pendulum is once again swinging hard in the right direction, hopefully without avoiding the swing back. All of that momentum toward more ambitious emissions cuts is clearly good, and nothing should take away from it!

While somewhat ironic then, it is precisely against this backdrop of increased global ambition to cut CO₂ emissions in the first place, and a broader understanding of the importance of serious climate action, that solar geoengineering should be discussed.

It must not be either–or. The best approach is a balanced portfolio, where solar geoengineering might have some, at most temporary, role in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, while the world cuts CO₂ emissions rapidly – to zero, and then some.¹⁵

Such a balanced approach may well be wishful thinking. If history – and not just climate history – is any guide, it almost surely is. Fundamental forces hold the world back from doing enough to cut CO₂ emissions. Those same forces push the world to do too much when it comes to solar geoengineering.