In a week of extreme heat, can we talk about geo-engineering?

This is a three-part post about meeting James Hansen, one of the most important living climate scientists. Part 2 and 3 to follow.

James Hansen and me on stage in Helsinki.

James Hansen is an elder in our field who I appreciate very much, who has never really minced his words but has certainly become bolder and more determined the older he gets.

Hansen, or Jim, is a climatologist, best known for his 1988 testimony to the US Congress on climate change that lifted global warming into popular consciousness. (Yes 38 years ago. I was four years old. In a week of 39 degree temperatures that may see events cancelled at London Climate Action Week, this makes me weep.)

Jim’s more recent articles and subtack newsletter often cover personal stories about his lived history of doing climate research, and how he has interacted with institutional power in the course of that professional career. That interaction, for someone so outspoken, has not always been easy.

Another person I appreciate very much, my mate Roger Hallam, describes the far higher level of trustworthiness than the average working professional can attain, due to their status as ‘retired’. Roger’s a sociologist, and he explained how once people lose the constraints that come with concern about a career or professional status, it’s possible to behave with a much higher level of honesty. You don’t have to bullshit to protect your reputation, basically. For example, it’s easy to recognise the outspokenness of Sir David King and the work he’s done since freeing himself from the roles of UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor and the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change.

Jim hasn’t retired from his position at Columbia University yet but it is also possible to see these constraints fall away.

There are many uncomfortable truths that need to be spoken; often these things can get you discredited, fired, or totally cancelled. Of course, there are business interests tied up in many universities where people want to speak out about corporate behaviour and company interests, but they’re simply not allowed to. Because we all need to put food on the table and a roof over our heads, the silencing works.

This feels fundamental to the climate conversation. And why someone such as Jim speaking out is so important.

A Climate Reckoning

We met on stage in Helsinki last year, at a brilliant conference organised by Operaatio Arktis to discuss climate research and what many people know as ‘geo-engineering’ or making planned interventions in the earth systems energy balance, to attempt to rectify the impacts of our fossil fuel use.

I was interviewing Jim in a session called ‘Climate Reckoning: Where We Really Stand’. It was an opportunity for us to discuss the real impacts and decisions being implemented now, rather than in a theoretical future, or in an imagined reality of the climate situation.

You can watch the whole video, and I do think it’s worth it (it’s always worth listening to Jim). But the short version is this: the situation is really bad, and we have to do something about it, and unless an intervention is made in terms of carbon emissions, energy and heating in the earth system, then we are utterly fucked. That something “could be”, thinks Jim, Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Is talking about SRM controversial?

Jim is now an advocate for SRM, a form of geo-engineering (using stratospheric aerosol injection most likely) as a means of cooling the earth’s temperature by inserting tiny particles in very large numbers into the upper atmosphere.

It is seen as controversial for a number of reasons: a mix of ethical, scientific, and governance concerns. But is it controversial to even talk about SRM, or research it?

One fear is that SRM or geo-engineering more generally could cause a risk of a thing that people call termination shock; if you stop doing the geo-engineering suddenly you will very quickly feel the bounce back of the energy accumulating in the earth system, and therefore a very rapid onset of heating.

Because these interventions in our earth energy systems balance only mask warming rather than remove the underlying greenhouse gases, the cooling effect is at best fragile and temporary — and once the intervention stops, any masking impact rapidly disappears. If deployment were stopped or derailed (for example, by war, a collapse in funding, technical failure, or other global insecurity), much more rapid warming would follow. Some studies describe large-scale SRM requiring a multi-decade or even century-long commitment. And how good are we currently at that kind of thing? (Other than the Future Library, or indigenous practices, which aren’t currently the basis for our political decisions, sadly.)

I also believe that termination shock isn’t simply theoretical, or to do with some down-the-line activity to do with potential earth-systems interventions. For me — and I asked this of Jim — aren’t we living through a termination shock now, in regards to maritime sulfur emissions? I’ll go into that fully — because it needs space for people who haven’t heard about it — in the next post.

Do we leave it to these people?

We might be worried talking about or researching SRM and other forms of geo-engingeering, but there’s a lot of people already ploughing ahead with the tech and trials and tales, a lot of which is driven not by the health of humanity, but by private capital and profit.

For example, Stardust Solutions is a US-Israeli geo-engineering startup developing proprietary SRM and stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) technologies designed to reflect sunlight and cool the Earth. “The company aims to de-risk SAI deployment” apparently, while pledging to “only deploy if authorised by global governments” — but they’ve still raised $75 million to conduct “outdoor SAI experiments” which some capital investors will want back.

There’s also Make Sunsets, who plan to launch sulfur-filled balloons into the stratosphere for solar geo-engineering, and they’re also raising capital to do so.

And a new film Plan C for Civilisation is now out, documenting the story of geo-engineering proponent David Keith, Professor of Geophysical Science at the University of Chicago, and what the film-makers call the “high-stakes terrain where cutting-edge research, environmental activism, public ethics, and global politics collide.”

This is why I believe we need to be talking about all these technologies, and the motives behind the people or organisations involved. Part of the reason for that is because talking about SRM is a good way to talk about how capitalism cannot deal with the climate and the mess we’re in. I will go into depth on that in the final post.

A mythic bargain for our souls

One of the things Jim does, which I think is one of the most useful things he does, is speak out about the issue with a very interesting language, drawing on biblical images and mythical stories.

It’s a proportionate language, because we are living through an era of biblical or mythic-scale consequences. It is also very obvious that our culture, our media, and our systems of Western knowledge are not in a fit state to support us reckoning with the truth of our times. We just don’t have the means to properly understand the scale of the technologies we have invented, deployed within human technology systems — society, culture — that we can never be certain of how they will interact.

So, aside from his contribution to the scientific disciplines of earth system science and understanding of the climate and our effect on it, one of the most useful contributions from Jim is the encouragement for us to understand the nature of our predicament as arising from what he spoke about in Helsinki and elsewhere: a Faustian bargain.

A Faustian bargain is a deal that you do with the devil. It means you’ve traded away something of moral or spiritual value — like your soul, or your integrity — for a worldly and short-term benefit, such as power or wealth. It comes from the myth of Faust and Mephistopheles. It’s an important part of Christian teaching and tradition.

What it also means is that the person making the bargain gives away the possibility of any virtuous means to address their circumstances. You are left with the worst or least worst options only.

Jim has been talking in these terms about a Faustian bargain since at least 1990 — and especially in terms of particulate aerosol pollution, and the decisions made by individuals to both keep polluting and hide the impacts of that pollution; decisions made by people and systems of people, which includes politics, institutions and business.

He has stuck with this frame, I believe, because it draws attention to the concrete reality of actual individual people making decisions — bargains — rather than faceless corporates, or abstract industries.

So in terms of the collapsing climate, global heating, and the termination shock that I believe we are currently living through now, and the fact that actual individuals make these decisions… who the fuck has made a deal with the devil, on our behalf – while keeping it from us?

That’s what I’ll get to in Part 2.