With a Few Billion Dollars, You Could Change the World's Weather Patterns

Geoengineering might save the world, but geoengineering might also destroy the world. Geoengineering should strike terror into the heart of every self-respecting humanist, but geoengineering might just be necessary. Geoengineering may avert catastrophic climate change, but geoengineering may also unleash a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences that forever alters the planet’s climatic system.

You get the picture. The concept of artificially tampering with the world’s climate—say, by injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere or seeding clouds with salt—is as controversial as anything scientists are currently considering doing. The idea is to reflect light back into space to offset the warming caused by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Few ideas are as contentious.

Videos by VICE

In his New Yorker survey of the latest geoengineering tech and most recent moral arguments, Michael Specter notes that many view the idea as “encouraging a heart-attack patient to avoid exercise and continue to gobble fatty food while simply doubling his dose of Lipitor.”

That’s a pretty good metaphor, but to make it even more accurate consider two things:

1. That heart attack patient’s cardiovascular system has already been gradually warped by all sorts of unnatural things—to overextend our metaphor, let’s say a lifelong exposure to tobacco smoke and a steady intake of sugary soda. In other words, the system already has been “geoengineered,” albeit somewhat subtly, and over a longer period of time.
2. The prescription, which seems crazy, might actually work. Might.

So: climate change is screwing the world over, humanity absolutely refuses to stop burning the fossil fuels feeding it, and we’re left with few good options on the table. A risky, planetary-scale experiment to regulate solar radiation suddenly seems feasible, at least by the numbers. But an overlooked part of the equation comes at the end of Specter’s piece, which for the most part gathers and analyzes arguments that have been made before—that the technology is already on the loose, and that any nation (or corporation, for that matter) that wanted to sink a few billion dollars into such a project could feasibly do so.

That’s how much it’d cost to change the weather patterns of the planet. A few billion dollars. There are hundreds of people that have access to that kind of cash, thousands of corporations. Almost every nation. And any one of them could sweep aside the web of ethical dilemmas articulated above and get down to business.

“The basic principles are widely published,” he writes, “the intellectual property behind nearly every technique lies in the public domain. If the Maldives wanted to send airplanes into the stratosphere to scatter sulfates, who could stop them?”

Rogue, climate-saving superhero states could take it upon themselves to jump right in. That’s been another longstanding concern of geoengineering; the politics required to make it work well. But it’s inexpensive enough, the technology available enough that states might just do it. Australia could seed clouds. Germany could spew sulfates. Algeria could lay out massive mirror complex in the Sahara. All of which could affect the global climate from within the boundaries of a sovereign state.

Nathan Myhrvold says bring it on: “We decide to do much worse than this every day, and we decide unilaterally. We are polluting the earth unilaterally. Whether it’s life-taking decisions, like wars, or something like a trade embargo, the world is about people taking action, not agreeing to take action. And, frankly, the Maldives could say, ‘Fuck you all—we want to stay alive.’ Would you blame them? Wouldn’t any reasonable country do the same?”

Now, it won’t really keep me up at night worrying whether or not a poor, small island nation will start geoengineering under the cover of night. Nor will any billionaire likely opt to tap into his inner super villain for no particular personal benefit. But there are genuine concerns: what if the urgency to halt climate change accelerates, and the response is poorly coordinated? Things could just happen.

Years of ever-improving, energy-consuming technology has saddled us with a seemingly insurmountable problem in climate change, and we’re right to be skeptical that turning to even more advanced tech can bail us out (especially when our politics has most certainly has not caught up with our tech). But you can bet that down the line, someone somewhere won’t be.