Geoengineering, the deliberate hacking of Earth’s climate, might be one of the most promising potential responses to climate change, especially in the absence of significant carbon emission reductions. It’s also one of the most controversial. We engineered our planet into our environmental crisis, but can we engineer our way out with a stratospheric veil against the sun, the cultivation of photosynthetic plankton, or fleets of unmanned ships seeding the clouds?
In his new book, The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World, Oliver Morton argues that the risks of climate change merit serious action. According to Morton, geoengineering is not a simple or singular solution to the problem, but it is worth exploring, even if it’s never actually deployed.
On Monday, Feb. 1, at 12:15 p.m., Future Tense will host a lunch in Washington, D.C., where Oliver Morton and Future Tense Fellow Katherine Mangu-Ward will discuss geoengineering’s potential as a climate change fix and the many challenges that would come with it.