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- [00:02]
James Kantor
It's getting hotter and deadlier. The recent European heat wave killed some 2,300 people, with more than half of those deaths attributable to human caused climate change. But what if temperatures can be lowered using technology? It's a highly charged question. One of the ideas out there is to create a parasol of particles around the Earth to reflect sunlight back into space. Cooling the planet this way is known as solar geoengineering. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and there's no shortage of questions. Is this technology a free pass to keep on emitting? What if a megalomaniacal billionaire or a malicious state actor gets hold of it? And what if the sun blocking parasol is suddenly removed because the underlying problem, the stock of greenhouse gases, it's still there? Many Europeans reject geoengineering outright. They say nobody should be playing God with the climate. Yet exploration of geoengineering, backed by private investors, looks to be zooming ahead unregulated, but in anticipation of strong demand. Demand from populations and from governments to curb heat waves and other consequences of climate change. In a world where temperature rises are on course to reach nearly 3 degrees this century, that's way above the 1.5 degrees target concluded a decade ago under the Paris climate Agreement. In this episode, a conversation with Cynthia Scharf. Cynthia participated in those Paris negotiations as an aide to Ban Ki Moon, the former UN Secretary General. He she's now with the Brussels based think tank, the center for Future Generations. Cynthia is not giving up on the Paris Agreement, far from it. She says efforts to drastically cut emissions are essential. But Cynthia says the time has come to consider the implications of what she calls technologies of desperation, like dimming the.
- [02:16]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Sun with solar geoengineering.
- [02:18]
James Kantor
And that it's time for the European Union to take a leadership role to determine if the technology can be safe and viable or if it's just too dangerous to try. Now, looking around China's preference for state secrecy makes it unsuitable for such a role. And the US under Trump has walked out on science, climate action and collective security. That, says Cynthia, leaves Europe well placed to pick up the mantle of responsibility to try to put up international guardrails against careless or malign use of geoengineering. And to do so by working towards governance of the technology with the full participation of climate vulnerable countries. Those that did the least to cause the climate crisis in the first place. Also, by publicly funding research into what might happen to the environment, to ecosystems, even to our political systems, we. If geoengineering is used without regard for other countries and by monitoring the stratosphere to raise the alarm in the event of COVID testing or a unilateral deployment. Testing and deployment that could have deleterious effects on billions of people. Back down on Earth.
- [03:43]
Narrator/Reader
No migrants more in.
- [03:45]
Cynthia Scharf
No Europe without Christianity. An alliance also with Russia.
- [03:53]
James Kantor
Welcome to EU Scream, the podcast that guides you through stories coming from the eu. We talk about the news a bit differently and with people who really know what they're talking about. I'm James Kantor. This is episode 118, putting guardrails on Playing God with Cynthia Scharf of the center for Future Generations.
- [04:19]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Cynthia, when we first met, you told me about how you'd organize an event at the Vatican to discuss solar geoengineering. How do religion, humility, long term thinking, help with developing policy and thinking about responsibility for this technology?
- [04:39]
Cynthia Scharf
It is a heavy load to carry in terms of thinking through the implications of either using this technology or not using it over the coming decades. And oftentimes when I speak with laypeople about solar geoengineering, one of the first comments they say is, are we playing God? And I took that comment to heart. And I myself am a person of faith, and I was already active with a religious climate NGO in the United States. And so I worked with them to create a report called Playing God where we interviewed 12 different faith traditions informing us about how they might look at this technology. None of them had any background in this. Knowledge and awareness is still extremely low. But it's those moral issues, it's the bigger issues about how does this affect us as society? What does it mean to be human? And so it wasn't a stretch for me to think about reaching out to some people I knew at the Vatican to organize a workshop on this topic.
- [05:46]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And when it comes to a trip to the Vatican to talk about technologies or to talk about changes in society, does one hang out with cardinals?
- [05:56]
Cynthia Scharf
The late Pope Francis I'm not nearly that exalted, no. We were working with their, not the cardinals, but they have something called a dicastery. And they have a whole academic wing of the Vatican and they had been looking, as we see, from the new pope, he is interested in AI. So they have some very learned people who are interacting with scientists for many, many years now. And so this was not a real leap for them. They felt it was one in a series of conversations on emerging technologies.
- [06:27]
James Kantor
So this was really to meditate a.
- [06:29]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Bit on how solar geoengineering can be part of proper stewardship of the planet, because it Goes way beyond something called cloud seeding, which is a way to just bring rain on.
- [06:43]
Cynthia Scharf
Cloud seeding is a short term intervention used to clean up the air, think about the Beijing Olympics, or to invoke rain. And it has been done for decades in numerous countries around the world, including the United States and elsewhere. But it is not the same thing as srm. Again, solar radiation modification, which is designed as really a technology of desperation. Desperation that we are not where we need to be in terms of achieving our climate goals. In fact, under the Paris Agreement, 1.5 degrees Celsius change was invoked as the temperature that we should be aiming for. Currently we are on a trajectory to reach double that. And there will be massive amounts of human suffering along that path.
- [07:35]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
When we talk about solar geoengineering, these are large scale interventions. They wouldn't fix the climate as such, but they could tame the problem.
- [07:45]
Cynthia Scharf
So the idea of SRM solar geoengineering is to reflect sunlight back into space so that the Earth doesn't heat up. So the idea is to basically put a parasol around the Earth. That parasol would be comprised of sulfate aerosols which reflect sunlight back. So the idea is you would take into the stratosphere a fleet of 100 or more jets flying 24, 7, distributing these aerosols into the stratosphere and the winds would then circulate them around the globe. And basically within a decade or even less, the global temperature would cool. There is no other technology or policy intervention in, in the climate toolkit that could lower temperatures that quickly.
- [08:37]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And that in and of itself could prevent something called climate tipping points, a kind of spiraling effect.
- [08:45]
Cynthia Scharf
Tipping points is a debated issue in the scientific community. It is a real thing. There are people out there looking at climate tipping points, which would mean a certain threshold has passed after which the.
- [08:59]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Change is irreversible, like less white space at the Arctic, which would mean that there would be more absorption of solar radiation into the Earth.
- [09:08]
Cynthia Scharf
Feedback loops. Exactly. Exactly. So the melting of the Arctic, the Greenlandic glacial sheet melting, the doomsday glacier, sea level rise, the Amazon turning from a sink of carbon into actually a source which is already happening. And so solar geoengineering is discussed in the context of some of the tipping points, but there's also a lot of research that says it would not stop those tipping points. So we shouldn't be looking at it in the context only of tipping points, but looking at what it might mean to reduce heat, extreme heat. And in that respect, imagine a country where a significant part of Your population works outside and having temperatures and then adding humidity on top of that to levels, they call it wet bulb temperature, where it is simply untenable to live in those temperatures. Along comes a potential technology that would turn down the heat. Of course, that would be of interest because there's nothing else in the toolkit that could do that.
- [10:16]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And very interestingly, chapter one of a book called Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2020, it portrays precisely this scenario in India in the aftermath of a tremendous heat wave.
- [10:33]
Narrator/Reader
Ordinary town In Uttar Pradesh, 6am, 38 degrees, humidity about 35%. The combination was the thing. A few years ago, it would have been among the hottest wet bulb temperatures ever recorded. Now, just a Wednesday morning.
- [10:52]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And India unilaterally goes ahead with solar geoengineering to correct the heat and not to give too much away. There's some anger back at the global authority about the unilateral use of it. So this raises the question as well, because in that first chapter of the book, what is at stake here is that solar geoengineering may indeed, if used unilaterally, affect different parts of the world differently.
- [11:23]
Cynthia Scharf
Solar geoengineering, and I want to be specific without being too wonky, we're talking about one specific type of solar geoengineering. It has the very long name of stratospheric aerosol injection, which is the type that I just described, with the planes flying 24, 7 around the world, releasing aerosols high into the atmosphere, stratosphere. The modeling thus far shows that, yes, this could cool the Earth quite quickly, however, and it would affect every single country in the world, but not necessarily equally. Although again, early stages research, it tends to show that the effects of using solar geoengineering would be more homeogeneous than what we're going to see. Given climate change. There's basically a huge amount we still don't know. But the response that this is not going to affect everyone exactly the same way is true. And that sets up a dynamic in which some countries win, some countries lose. And therefore, how do you equitably decide whose finger is on the global thermostat? Who's making that decision? It would be used for decades, if not a century or more. And why is that? Because solar geoengineering does not solve climate change. It does not address the cause of climate change, which is excess CO2 in the atmosphere, excess greenhouse gases. All it does is mask one of the symptoms, excess heat. So it's not a substitute for slashing emissions to Zero and then even going.
- [13:10]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Net negative, which they do in Ministry for the Future. Eventually, eventually in the book, in the novel, yes.
- [13:18]
Cynthia Scharf
But the only way to solve the cause is to get emissions to zero, then go net negative, pulling out the excess amount of CO2 that's been deposited in the atmosphere for decades already. And we simply do not have that technology at a scale yet that would be able to suck that much CO2 out of the atmosphere.
- [13:42]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
So this kind of buys us a little bit of time to do that in a way. But if it is done incorrectly, then there could be conflicts that are generated by this.
- [13:55]
Cynthia Scharf
Let me again emphasize again, this isn't a solution or a substitute. At best, it's a supplement that could buy some time to reduce carbon and strengthen adaptation and do all the things that my generation for the last 30 years has known about, but we've not done at nearly the speed or the scale needed. And I say that as someone who was working at the United Nations, I was in the Secretary General's office writing the speeches at Paris, wanting with all of our strength the Paris Agreement to work. And I still very much want the Paris Agreement to work. So this is not an abandonment of that essential track of climate policy, but the idea that we potentially could buy time and alleviate some suffering in the interim is what has propelled this research to go on. But it also has the potential to trigger a conflict, because what if country A is benefited by using this and country B, rightly or wrongly, maybe attributable to the science, maybe not, feels like it's gotten the raw end of the stick. Even though attribution scientifically would take about 10 years to say X symptom was caused by Y agent. You can be sure that as soon as someone starts spraying something in the sky, people are going to be seeing something that they feel might be happening. A social media fueled conspiracy or rumors could easily start. And no one is going to wait 10 years for the science to say, well, actually this wasn't the cause. So the potential for escalation of, of conflict, for misinformation, for wacky conspiracies is enormous.
- [15:54]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Now there are a slew of private sector startup style companies getting involved in geoengineering, including in solar geoengineering. There is, to take one example, the Israeli American company Stardust, which is led by a former senior official of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which reportedly oversees the country's nuclear weapons program. That's long been a source of speculation. So Stardust, this company, they're working on stratospheric aerosol injection. And they have some kind of proprietary particle that blocks solar radiation, that blocks heat from the sun, effectively. Is this the level on which the competition will focus for the right kind of solution?
- [16:42]
Cynthia Scharf
We are still at very early stages with the private sector moving in. So I'm only aware of two private companies that are in this space. There's this Israeli company, Stardust, and then there's a wacky DIY version called Make Sunsets which got a lot of media attention about two or three years ago.
- [17:02]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
That was Southern California.
- [17:05]
Cynthia Scharf
Some bros from Silicon Valley area got in a van and drove down across the border into Baja California territory of Mexico, bought some balloons off of Amazon, filled them with sulfur dioxide and then sold cooling credits for $10 each to the public. The scientific community was laughing all over itself over the preposterousness of this. But the media attention was enormous. And really it showed that what we have right now is a situation where the research is going to move ahead quickly and yet the governance is basically non existent. There is venture capital money moving into geoengineering research. Right now it is primarily in the Silicon Valley area, but there are hedge funds elsewhere that are moving into this space. And that is really concerning because there is no international prohibition against using this technology.
- [18:07]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
There are some non binding, there are.
- [18:09]
Cynthia Scharf
Bits and bobs in different agreements, so example the Convention on Biological Diversity, but there is nothing binding.
- [18:18]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And also the United States is not a signatory to that particular.
- [18:21]
Cynthia Scharf
Of course, yes, the US is not a signatory to the cbd. The Montreal Protocol people have talked about. Maybe there could be provisions in this.
- [18:29]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Because the ozone layer, because the ozone layer is protected by the Montreal Protocol. So one might think if indeed the ozone layer would be affected by this technology, then maybe that treaty could be invoked. I guess that's the connection.
- [18:44]
Cynthia Scharf
Yeah. There is some evidence to show that if stratospheric aerosol injection sai were used, the ozone layer might be damaged, which is in nobody's interest. And so people are looking at the Montreal Protocol, but there is no one size fits all to govern the research, potential outdoor testing and potential deployment of this technology.
- [19:15]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
There is this concern that private companies, in some cases Silicon Valley style companies holding the intellectual property on this technology could allow them to play God with the weather and the climate. In some scenarios the profits could be immense given the desperate demand for cooling in some countries. And yes, the temptation to deploy it is only going to grow. And yes, maybe a billionaire could take this technology into their own hands to use. But you say a rogue or Private deployment by one of these companies is probably less likely. It's probably unlikely. More likely would be the worry that states, countries with the means to buy Stardust technology or another company's technology would go ahead and use it, or that that state kind of develops its own and deploys it unilaterally, almost. Is that right?
- [20:08]
Cynthia Scharf
Yes. There is a trope that a billionaire could go out there and change the global climate. That is not true because, as I described, to actually do a scientifically robust deployment, you need to have access to air bases at different latitudes around the world. You need to fly a fleet of airplanes that are not yet invented. There has not yet been invented an engine that would fly a jet at that altitude. So what could happen is a billionaire or a company could do an outdoor test. It would not change the global climate. Potentially, it could change regional or national weather for some time. So it could potentially wreak havoc with weather in a region or a country. Certainly would fuel geopolitical mayhem. Social media would go crazy. So you could cause a real provocation by doing a large outdoor test. But Elon Musk or others are not going to be able to change the global climate themselves. However, it is potentially possible, not right now, but within a decade or so, that there could be a unilateral deployment by a country. At present, the US And China are really the only two countries that have the superpower, not only technical capability, but superpower influence to push back if there was massive outcry from other countries. China does have a program in research. It is very small at this stage, much smaller than what we see in the west, at least what we know at the unclassified level. I obviously can't speak to unclassified.
- [22:07]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
I mean, it makes sense that this sort of spills over into the military domain. So perhaps military people are keeping some solar geoengineering experiments under wraps, or at least they're thinking under wraps.
- [22:20]
Cynthia Scharf
My experience is that they have not done anything outdoor experiments that I'm aware of. But yes, there are people in, in the military and in the intelligence community who are very aware of this. I've spoken with some of them. And again, they're looking at it not necessarily as a weapon. It is not a weapon because everyone is affected. Right. So it's a very blunt instrument. There's much more effective ways of targeting an opponent. But what it would do is something along the lines of geopolitical soft power or blackmail or leverage. And that is very important in terms of the geopolitical chess game.
- [23:02]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And then Cynthia there's the danger that's been identified as quotes. Termination, shock. That's another element of hazard when it comes to solar geoengineering.
- [23:14]
Cynthia Scharf
Absolutely. I use a less exalted term. I call it climate boomerang. Imagine country A starts deploying it and another superpower is not really thrilled with the idea of doing this. And or in a democratic system, there's a new administration that comes on board and says, hey, we're not doing this. This is crazy. We're stopping, we're stopping this deployment. But then the temperature would shoot right back up. If deployment has been going on for quite some time and then it is stopped, that would be devastating for biodiversity. Plants and other species would not be able to adapt from this boomerang of saying temperatures dropped by a degree and now they're shooting right back up to a degree. That's simply way too much shock to the system.
- [24:04]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
I don't want to overdo the metaphor here, but one authority that does seem reluctant to play God is the European Commission. Last December, the Commission's scientific advisors said there should be a ban on some forms of research and that public funding should not be redirected from efforts to cut emissions.
- [24:27]
James Kantor
So, Cynthia, your approach does seem slightly.
- [24:30]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Different, at least in emphasis. You stress the need for more research and you say the EU should take the lead in research and that without public research funding, Europe will fall behind on expertise while others inevitably advance.
- [24:49]
Cynthia Scharf
So it's not just my personal opinion, but it's the view of the think tank that I work for, the center for Future Generations. And even in that title, you can see where our mindset is. It's really about responsible use of emerging technologies. We look at things beyond climate. We look at advanced AI and neurotech and biotech and others, but specifically on climate. So, yes, the EU's Chief Scientific Advisory Group came out with three reports, one of which is on the ethics of solar geoengineering, and made recommendations saying, we need to know more, we do need research. Research, however, should not be taken from funds that we need to decarbonize, to adapt. And if you look at the actual funding trends, for what kinds of funds have gone into solar geoengineering over the last 15 years, there is no evidence to suggest that it has pulled money away from clean energy technologies or from adaptation or from climate finance. That has not been the case. Nor has it been the case that fossil fuel companies are pouring money into.
- [25:56]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
This in order to create the conditions.
- [25:59]
Cynthia Scharf
So they can keep making profits. Yes. Not to say they wouldn't be interested in doing that. Not to say that might not happen in the future, but to date that has not been the case. So the reports are saying, yes, we need to know more. Even if we, the European Union, never intend to deploy it, we need to know what happens if someone else does. So we need to have that research. We need to have it responsibly governed. And that funding should come from public sources because otherwise we will have venture capitalists, billionaires, the private sector pouring money into this. And the research will not be transparent, it will not be accountable to any citizenry. And right now, if you ask me who's doing what and who's paying for it, there is no source that exists that tells us who's doing what, who's paying for it, what are they looking at? And so we're flying blind.
- [26:56]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
That's why you have called for an international public registry of research and funding and you encourage monitoring for tests in the stratosphere, as well as preventing ungoverned deployment. But putting the accent on additional research will be anathema to many people. And isn't it also true that geoengineering is impossible to test for its intended climate impact without a large scale deployment? And maybe that's where some of the people who are really upset about this may have a point.
- [27:34]
Cynthia Scharf
Oh absolutely, it's called moral hazard. In kind of political terms, philosophical terms, absolutely. They have a point. They're afraid that if we start down the road of more research that there's something called a slippery slope and that there is an inexorable momentum that eventually leads to someone using that. There's also a fear that if we use this instead of using it to buy time, what we're really doing is just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. And meanwhile we perpetuate a fossil fuel economy and we are in a fast track to climate catastrophe. Those are absolutely legitimate fears. So what the scientific advisors also said, in addition to publicly funded research, we need to have some safety measure, some stopgap to say research does not mean deployment. So what they called for was an EU wide moratorium on any use large scale test with transboundary impacts and or use at global scale of this technology. And that is something that we also believe is needed. But there is debate within the community about the best way to go forward with that. So to be very candid about that, there are some well informed people in the climate policy world who think that calling for a global moratorium is never going to happen legally. There are going to be Some countries that will never agree to that. And in fact, that's a reason that we ended up with the Paris Agreement, because very smart people in the policy world realize that if we asked countries to submit their plans for how much they were going to cut admissions, those had to be voluntary. So for example, if they weren't voluntary, if they had to be legally binding in the United States, for example, the US Senate would never ratify something like that.
- [29:32]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Yeah, I mean, it's impossible to imagine the United States even under a barrack Obama or a Bill Clinton agreeing to internationally binding limit slaves like that.
- [29:41]
Cynthia Scharf
Or you could equally say other superpowers as well, some of the other Security Council members. So what can we do instead? And there's some beginning talks right now among some in the research community policy people. What would a no deployment agreement look like? Kind of premised on the model that the Paris Agreement came to, which was a voluntary agreement among countries, an international norm, if you would. Soft law, customary law, maybe bringing in the voice of the Pope, but bringing in large NGOs, bringing in civil society, bringing in private sectors, bringing in academic communities and researchers and researcher funders to say it is absolutely unacceptable to deploy this technology at this time for scientific reasons, for reasons of no governance, for reasons of ethics, for reasons of civil society hesitancy and opposition that no deployment right now is the stance we should have.
- [30:43]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And has anyone reached out to Pope Leo yet, the new Pope?
- [30:47]
Cynthia Scharf
Not that I'm aware of may happen. Maybe we'll try at some point to call some people that we know in the Vatican to talk about this, but it would really be a voluntary bottom up effort to say this is kind of morally not the norm right now.
- [31:06]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And where do you land when it comes to saying never no deployment ever.
- [31:13]
Cynthia Scharf
I personally think it would be extremely hard for humanity to agree on governing a technology with global impacts that would need to be used for, for decades, if not a century or more. How would we ever come together to decide that? And on the other hand, I think it's extremely important to realize that we can't compare the potential use of that with where we are right now. Today I'm sitting in Brussels and it's in the high 30s, which is very unusual for this place.
- [31:49]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
We're approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
- [31:52]
Cynthia Scharf
The world is only going to know hotter climates this century. Even if all emissions go to zero tomorrow, there is still heat baked into the system. The temperature will keep rising for 30 years. It is important to compare the risks, the environmental risks, the governance risks. The ethical risks of solar geoengineering with risks of a world that's headed twice the temperature rise we are at right now. So imagine hundreds of millions of people can no longer work outside. Hundreds of millions want to move across borders to safer areas. There are massive droughts, there's water insecurity, there's famines. So this is not a world compared to today. That is a very scary world and a world with geopolitical insecurity. And there's no doubt in the minds of planners at NATO or really militaries anywhere that climate change itself is a threat multiplier. So we must be very clear that we're comparing the threats from a rapidly warming world to the threats we envision with this other technology.
- [33:12]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
It's interesting, this sort of no deployment of solar geoengineering. It sort of echoes calls for an international non use agreement three, four years ago, supported by a group of academics. It also echoes a European parliament resolution from November 2023 that calls again for absolute, quote, a non use agreement at international level in accordance with the precautionary principle and in the absence of evidence of safety and full global consensus on its acceptability. I mean, those are really high bars.
- [33:47]
Cynthia Scharf
They'Re nearly impossible bars. And the non use agreement rankles because it is basically asking for no research to happen. And that's where we differ. We believe that research is needed. Publicly funded, transparent, accountable research is needed. And that's why when we're talking about what kind of safety stopgap measure could be put in place to give the public a sense of reassurance that we are not going down that slippery slope.
- [34:21]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
So when it comes to deployment now, of course we agree that's a bad.
- [34:26]
Cynthia Scharf
Idea right now, totally unacceptable.
- [34:28]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Even though, and I don't want to be glib here, it's been absolutely sweltering in Europe and it is early summer and already there are fires, evacuations, school closures, difficulties in cooling nuclear power plants, heat warnings all across this continent. There will be significant numbers of excess deaths from extreme heat this summer, even in Europe. So it's really not so hard to imagine demands to use this kind of technology as the heat waves get more and more intense. Just to zoom back in on that stratospheric aerosol technology and how it might be used, this involves huge numbers of aircraft and the amount of time that such a cooling operation would take would be multiple decades. This relies on a degree of global cooperation that seems less and less plausible.
- [35:22]
Cynthia Scharf
Yes, multilateralism is definitely on the patient's sickbed and not looking to be revived anytime soon. It's a huge challenge. There are probably two superpowers that could take it upon themselves to deploy in 10 years time once this fleet of aircraft has been built, when there's more scientific evidence to perhaps suggest that it would be a good idea, or best yet to say this is an insane idea, we should never go down this road. That's what research can also show us. And that's why research is necessary. Finding a way to bring governments together to agree on this seems extremely difficult. And yet we do need to have governance that satisfies some really important criteria. One is effectiveness. If the countries that seem most likely to deploy do not agree to it, then what's the point? Second of all, it needs to have moral legitimacy. So those countries that are most affected by climate change right now, that did least to cause the problem, absolutely have to have a seat at the table. So you need legitimacy and you need effectiveness in any kind of an agreement. That would be a very tall order to fill. It doesn't mean it's impossible. People talk about climate tipping points and how potentially solar geoengineering might be used to slow or deter some of those tipping points. I actually think we're going to see social tipping points be that very quick reversal of public opinion right now. Public opinion. First of all, very few people know about this in any sense that is really informed by the science. If they've heard of it, they might equate it with a Hollywood movie, with a nightmare scenario of three billionaires in a bunker. They might equate it with this crazy contrails conspiracy theory. But if there's, you know, accurate information that they do know, they are very scared. And of course it's a very scary thing to contemplate. But what if in 10 or 15 years you cannot go outside to garden or you don't have water in your tap? That is an entirely plausible scenario in many places around the world. So you can see public opinion going from never, ever, this is shocking to oh my God, do something. I do not care what country A, B or C thinks. I do not care what future generations think. I am dying.
- [38:03]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And at that point we need the research where we know what to do exactly. Whether to deploy, whether that's going to be safe, whether responding to public demands is simply going to make situations worse or whether they could make them better. And the kind of circumstances that we're going to need to sustain for many decades in order to make that a success.
- [38:25]
Cynthia Scharf
Absolutely right. There is going to come a Point where certain parts of society say this is, we can't live in this anymore, we don't care, use it. Look what just happened to temperatures in the southern part of Spain, right? Even in less than a decade we might be in a situation where things become unbearable. And then the discussion about do we know enough to have an informed opinion about whether to use this? Really come into play.
- [38:59]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
You know, in light of our conversation. It does make the kind of approach no deployment ever seem a little bit naive.
- [39:08]
Cynthia Scharf
One thing that I think the group of academics and some large international NGOs have been saying is that countries in the Global south are 100% against this technology. It's another form of climate colonialism. Actually that is not an informed view. We have been speaking to a number of countries in the Global South. We have been talking to a group of climate vulnerable countries. Again, those countries most affected by climate change and who had least to do with the cause of climate change. They're actually looking at this technology and saying, hmm, this is potentially interesting. Why? Because they don't see a positive outcome right now based on where the world is going. They frankly don't trust that the Global north is going to fulfill its climate commitments. Not on finance, not on emissions. The future looks very bleak. Some countries may not have a future. They might have to literally take their populations and move elsewhere. Some of those countries are considering, well, let's look into this because right now we don't have an option that looks desirable. And that is a very legitimate opinion in my view.
- [40:27]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And these are small island states or are there large African countries? Where is this alternative voice from the Global south coming?
- [40:35]
Cynthia Scharf
They're in a number of countries. Could potentially be some of the small islands, not necessarily in the Pacific, but other areas, countries in Africa. There is, to be quite frank, governments in that area who say it's all well and good that you have your Cambridge and MIT's and your Stanfords looking at this, but frankly I want my scientists telling me about this technology. Is it going to be risky for our people? Is it going to devastate or help our agriculture? And right now there are actually more countries in the Global south with scientists looking at this issue than there are countries in the Global North. However, the total amount of money is tiny compared to the amount of money being poured into research in the Global North.
- [41:21]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Research funding for solar geoengineering in the United States may have surpassed something like $100 million plus plus, while the total amount of EU funding for similar endeavors is only around 7 million at least. At the EU level. So the EU's capacity, at least until recently and at least in the immediate future from a research perspective, they're in no position to take the lead at home and in no position to be supporting these projects abroad, even if they were to use this as a way to build trust, build soft power with the Global South.
- [42:00]
Cynthia Scharf
The figures that you're looking at are from an NGO called SRM360. Basically, yes, the European Union has put very little money into this research. And the 7 million I think is actually cumulative over a period of time since 2015, maybe. So that's cumulative over at least 10 years. Right now the United States has put more money into this research than any other country. But to your point, yes, the European Union has spent very little money looking at this issue, maybe that needs to be changed so that there is publicly funded research. One might also think about, hey, maybe helping out some of these Global south countries with their own scientific capacity. Maybe that's a really good use of money so that these countries themselves can investigate this.
- [42:46]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Now, there's been a lot of writing about some indigenous groups saying solar geoengineering runs against their beliefs about living in harmony with nature, or that tech will save US thinking, produce the climate crisis in the first place. There's this incident where the Sami people in Sweden a few years ago protested against a harmony Harvard University backed project to release calcium particles into the stratosphere with a balloon. And Harvard had to suspend that project called scopex. It came across as a form of colonialism in a new form. But as you say, actually that's not the whole story when it comes to the Global South.
- [43:26]
Cynthia Scharf
I think it's simply a misnomer to think that there's one unanimous opinion anywhere in any part of the world. Yes, the SCOPE experiment was canceled because basically they didn't do the kind of public engagement and consultation and outreach with local communities that they should have done. And there was backlash. And that has really turned the public to become quite wary, quite negative of any experiment. And to be clear, scopex was not going to release any substances.
- [44:01]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
What were they doing with the balloon?
- [44:02]
Cynthia Scharf
They were going to measure how the winds actually move at this altitude and move the balloon so there was no environmental harm. But this is an issue where perception is going to be more important than fact. The science obviously is important, but the public perception could well be more important than whatever climate science reason there might be for using this.
- [44:29]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Now, you've written for Foreign Policy magazine about how the inventors of the atomic bomb in the Immediate post war era wanted to see international control. And this is all to do with the age of Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr and these very famous nuclear physicists. These physicists really felt what they had brought into being needed to be controlled. You see parallels with solar geoengineering here, since it gives the ability of a superpower to determine what you call the global thermostat.
- [45:03]
Cynthia Scharf
There's a really interesting speech that Oppenheimer gave as he was leaving los Alamos in 1945. He gave it to his fellow scientists as they were closing down the lab at that point. And he pondered the responsibility of those scientists to examine a technology that could mark a change in the nature of the world.
- [45:31]
J. Robert Oppenheimer (quoted)
I think that it hardly needs to be said why the impact is so strong. One is the extraordinary speed with which things which were right on the frontier of science were translated into terms where they affected many living people and potentially all people. This quantitative change has all the character of a change in quality, of a change in the nature of the world. They are changes in the relations between nations, not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling. Our only course is to see what we can do to bring about an understanding on a level deep enough to make a solution practicable, and to do that without undue delay.
- [46:17]
Cynthia Scharf
Now, nuclear weapons and solar geoengineering are very different. The purpose of a nuclear weapon is death and destruction. The purpose of solar geoengineering, if it were to be used and if it was of benefit and didn't turn out to be of net risk, it's a humanitarian motive to alleviate suffering from the get go. They're extremely different technologies. However, thinking about the fact that solar geoengineering, like biotech, like neurotechnology, like advanced AI, like quantum computing, these are technologies with global implications that we simply cannot understand at this point. And yet in each of these situations, the research, the potential that someone might use them in some kind of nefarious or even benign way, but the effects turn out to be vastly dangerous. That's an awesome responsibility. And so in that sense, I was looking at the comments that Oppenheimer made. I'm hoping that we as a species can be wise enough to realize how much we don't know and to say we need to have the global community, including the people who are least responsible for this catastrophe we're facing, coming together and making a decision based on the best information we can about what to do with this.
- [47:53]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And yet it does seem like an understatement. To say we're in a period of eroding confidence in these multilateral processes that used to lead us to talk about global governance. I mean, take the US Government right now, the elephant in the room, it seems, ready to stake a claim to any resource it wants. Greenland, the Panama Canal, Ukraine's minerals Canada.
- [48:17]
James Kantor
Where does that leave the plausibility of.
- [48:19]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Establishing global governance for solar geoengineering? And I ask you that, especially as somebody who was an aide to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and with him through the Paris Climate Change agreement, period.
- [48:36]
Cynthia Scharf
It's a difficult position. However, I actually think the European Union has a tremendous opportunity in front of it to take a leadership role on calling for international governance of this technology and doing more than calling for it to actually move forward on some key aspects. So one, supporting initiatives to create an international registry of research. So when a politician says who's doing what and who's paying for it, there might actually be a source to get that information. Second of all, create a global or at least a regional monitoring system. First of all, to have a baseline to establish what is in the stratosphere right now and to be able to detect is there a change in aerosols and the deposition of aerosols in the stratosphere? Right now, there is no monitoring system that would effectively answer those questions, which.
- [49:37]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Is important because we can't necessarily trust the Chinese. We know that information is very closely guarded in that system. And then when it comes to the Americans, they're kind of so disengaged from these global endeavors that it's very hard to imagine them taking the lead here. So who's going to do it? And what you are saying is Europe, you better step up.
- [50:00]
Cynthia Scharf
The Europeans have a real opportunity to walk the talk about the importance of transparency, of scientifically backed evidence based governance at a time when the United States, my country, is slashing scientific expertise left and right. In fact, the main agency in the United States government that has been doing research in the stratosphere has been cut in terms of funding.
- [50:25]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Noaa.
- [50:26]
Cynthia Scharf
Noaa, yes. Eminent scientists. Research funding that would help us have answers to this question is being cut. So the European Space Agency has been starting to talk to other actors. We have held a workshop to bring together countries inside the European Union, but not only actors from the uk, from India, from other countries to say, hey, we need to have at least a regional monitoring system, if not a global monitoring system to answer the question who's cheating? Right now we have no way to answer that. So we're calling for the EU public funding of research, creating a publicly transparent registry of information to support a scientific monitoring system. These are all kind of no regret tools for governance.
- [51:14]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And do we know how much even doing that would cost? I mean, is this something that should be stuck into the next multi annual financial framework, which is the EU jargon for the next seven year budget? But it probably wouldn't be that much, right?
- [51:29]
Cynthia Scharf
I would be hesitant to put a figure on it, but maybe in, you know, 10 million. It's not even, to be honest, James, it's not even the amount. It's the signal that the European Union is in the game. It wants to be part of the governance conversation and it's putting funding towards these values that it espouses.
- [51:57]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Why did governments and climate advocates avoid talking about geoengineering for so many decades? I actually wrote about geoengineering when I was, I was part of a team that ran that first green blog at the New York Times. And I remember doing stuff on geoengineering and kind of being laughed at 15, 20 years ago. We're not really laughing now.
- [52:22]
Cynthia Scharf
No. When I started eight years ago, I was also laughed at or ridiculed. The idea that we might take some jets and spray some stuff in the sky and change the world's climate. It's like something out of a science fiction novel or a Hollywood movie. It's really scary. And who wants to do that when we know what the solution is? The solution is to decarbonize. The solution is to strengthen our resilience. The solution is to help compensate countries that are already suffering from this. We know what the solution is. Clean energy moving toward a zero emissions economy.
- [52:57]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
But was there not this taboo in Omerta because the scientific community didn't want to engage with ideas that would give a free pass to the continuation of polluting. And to some degree we're still in that paradigm because people are shy about these issues and engaging in the research. I mean, you could say this sensitivity just last December when the European Commission said it wants to ensure that public funding for any geoengineering research does not take away from the money being spent to cut, you know, greenhouse gas pollution and do adaptation to a hotter planet. This tension is still there.
- [53:39]
Cynthia Scharf
The tension is there, but it is decreasing. In the last two years this conversation has started to take off. It is still very challenging and risky politically for governments to talk about this. But the reality is we're not where we needed. And even though we know the solution, scientists know the solution, we are not doing it. So what's the plan? And governments right now don't have an answer. There are those that say climate geoengineering is so crazy that maybe it will have the effect of motivating people to cut more emissions because the alternative is so outrageous.
- [54:21]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And this taboo, this omerta about talking about geoengineering is very interesting as well. When we talk about the disinformation problems around the atmosphere, around the stratosphere. You know, surf the web or surf podcasts for long enough and you're going to find the conspiracy theory side of the geoengineering conversation. That in brief, geoengineering has been going on for years without public consent as a way to control the population. And that vapor trails from planes or chemtrails, right. Contain harmful chemicals that are sprayed all over the public, even around Europe to again control the population somehow. I mean, we haven't had a sort of public conversation about geoengineering and about solar geoengineering and about stratospheric aerosol injection. It's created fertile territory for the tin hatted brigades to flourish.
- [55:19]
Cynthia Scharf
I fully agree with you. The fact that we haven't had an informed public conversation with proponents and opponents, every view on this needs to be in that room. But the fact that it's been taboo has actually made the likelihood of conspiracy theorists or misinformation disinformation all the more likely. In the United States. There are many states right now where there's been some legislation proposed to ban geoengineering. And when you actually look at what they are looking to ban, it has nothing to do with what's actually being proposed. It's some of these chemtrailer conspiracy theorists.
- [56:04]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
So stopping airplanes from flying over our.
- [56:07]
Cynthia Scharf
Cities because they're dumping mind controlling drugs on the population. And there have been some surveys showing that up to 25% of Americans believe this is true. And at this time we are living through a period where science and trust in institutions is being challenged by the government. We have an anti vax head of the United States Government Department of Health and Human Services. This after the COVID pandemic, slashing funding for science on climate change, erasing climate change from websites under the US Government's control. It is absurd and self defeating in the highest, highest degree.
- [56:53]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
So this is not only the opportunity for Europe to be a beacon for science and for factual investigation, it is actually, one could argue, a moral imperative given what is happening across the Atlantic.
- [57:08]
Cynthia Scharf
Absolutely.
- [57:08]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
Where science is being tossed out of the window by this administration, we do not know how long MAGA will be in power. We do not know whether this is a blip or whether this is the new normal in the United States. And the Europeans have to some degree the responsibility to take on that mantle. And my fear is not exactly the Europeans towing the American line, but they are cutting back policies that were meant to fulfill the commitment that had been made to control emissions, to deal with a climate transition that would be fair, that would deal with the technology giants. All of this is now in play. So I harbor a genuine worry that, you know, Europe may not be the beacon. And more and more, if you look at the European Parliament, where, you know, you have like 30% of the parliament, that's essentially MAGA. These are people from very hard right parties that are in increasingly a voting ally for the old center right. And you are seeing policies move in a direction where you have people starting to talk about dismantling of the administrative state. You are starting to see people talk about the idea of mass firings of civil servants. You are starting to see people very wholeheartedly use narratives that are anti science, not factful narratives that are designed to get rid of policies on the environment, get rid of, rid of policies on the climate to simply benefit whatever corporate lobbyist has last been in their office or even suits their anti science narratives.
- [58:50]
Cynthia Scharf
Yeah, their ideology. Yeah. I think the EU is kind of the last great hope. What I fear is at the very first time in history, not only do we have right wing politicians, but we are up against hard limits environmentally. We have never had that situation in history and of not only from the politics and the economics, but also the environmental constraint that we're now coming up against. I believe that social tipping point is going to come pretty soon because our societies are used to so much more comfort than countries in the global South. The rapidity with which that social tipping point might be breached will probably happen faster in the global North.
- [59:33]
Interviewer (possibly James Kantor or a co-host)
And if there is a failure to regulate social media robustly, then the chances of the right decisions being made when those tipping points come are vastly reduced. And so my concern there is that the Europeans, if they start trading away their digital policies for better trade agreements with Donald Trump. Trump. That's short termism of a very, very disturbing kind.
- [60:01]
Cynthia Scharf
Yep, yep. And short termism often wins out. And the EU is, there's a lot of problems, but, oh my God, do we need it?
- [60:19]
James Kantor
That's it for this episode, which was made in partnership with the center for Future Generations. You'll find more on Cynthia's work on climate interventions. As well as the Center's work on advanced AI, biotech and neurotech at cfg. EU Eu Scream is non profit journalism. We might occasionally do partnerships like this one and take advertising, and we're grateful to Full Beam Media for an annual grant. But here's the we need your support to bring you more content more regularly. It's your support that helps us delve into this new, darker era in our politics, into how the EU should be responding, and into the thoughts and experience of people who really know what they're talking about. Small donations to large ones, it's all incredibly appreciated. It also helps when we get a five star rating at Spotify or a review at Apple. Podcasts and passing on episodes to family, colleagues, friends. That's another great way to show support. For more details and for more EU Scream, do please visit euscream. Com. Thanks for listening.