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The first time I heard about solar geoengineering, I considered the idea nuts. It is. Two decades later – after having worked on the topic at Environmental Defense Fund, helping launch Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, and doing quite a bit of research and writing on the topic myself – I still think it is a rather healthy attitude to have toward the topic. The entire enterprise seems like a gamble, and a planetary one at that.

Of course, anyone who’s been paying attention to what’s happening with the rapidly changing climate will recognize that the world is currently playing a different kind of gamble with the planet, and arguably an even larger one.

Geoengineering – in particular, solar geoengineering, attempting to cool the planet by sending a small fraction of sunlight back into space, or by increasing the amount of solar radiation that escapes back into space – is no solution to climate change. That much is clear. It does not address the root cause of too much carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, nor the continuing inflow of CO₂ emissions. Geoengineering is a technofix, and a highly imperfect one at that.

Of course, sanitation, too, is a technofix. Without it, cities would not be possible. Modern life is replete with such technofixes. It’s often a fine balance between decrying something as a technofix that simply serves to cement the status quo and celebrating an invention as a clear step forward. It is this constant back-and-forth, this constant internal debate, which characterizes many a geoengineering conversation. There is simply no easy answer, no clear line. Even the very idea of working on the topic comes with a number of judgment calls.