Geoengineering and efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C
Geoengineering is defined by the Royal Society as “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.” Does the Paris agreement to limit global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees mean geoengineering is inevitable? And is this desirable?
This Conversation will discuss some of the different types of geoengineering that have been suggested, the possible risks and benefits that may be associated with them, and the limits to current national and international governance of geoengineering. Can some forms of geoengineering be justified as having minimal risks? Is geoengineering the lesser of two evils? And what is at stake if geoengineering is embarked upon?
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Anita has a PhD in climate governance from the University of Melbourne, plus a Masters in climate change and an engineering degree from the Australian National University. She is Director of Workforce Development at the Clean Energy Council. Previously she ran the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College, and prior to that she worked for the Australian Parliamentary Library providing research and analysis to Members and Senators of the Australian Parliament on climate change and renewable energy issues.
Professor David Karoly is an internationally recognised expert in climate change and climate variability, including greenhouse climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and interannual climate variations due to El Niño-Southern Oscillation. He was heavily involved in preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007, in several different roles.
Professor Karoly is a member of the new Climate Change Authority in Australia. He is also a member of the Science Advisory Panel to the Australian Climate Commission, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and the Joint Scientific Committee, which provides oversight of the World Climate Research Programme.
Professor Karoly joined the School of Earth Sciences in May 2007 as an ARC Federation Fellow funded by the Australian government.
Dr Jeremy Baskin currently teaches courses on ‘Business and Sustainability’ and on ‘Global Environmental Politics’ at the University of Melbourne. He is completing a PhD in Politics examining the most controversial geoengineering proposal: the spraying of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce incoming sunlight and cool the planet, or ‘solar geoengineering’. In this he explores the imagined world/s of geoengineering, and asks why solar geoengineering has become a mainstream proposition, and yet has failed to be normalised as an acceptable third leg of climate policy.