“In my view, it would be morally wrong for us not to do this — but we want to do it as quickly and as safely as possible,” he said.
very precocious
But experts in the field say such an effort is premature and could have the opposite effect than Eastman intended.
“The current state of science is not good enough… either reject it or accept it, let alone implement it,” wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of solar geoengineering Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, which called for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies by governments, international agreements or scientific bodies in an email. “It’s a very bad idea to go ahead with implementation at this stage,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR edit DNA embryos, while the safety and ethics of this step are still being debated in the scientific community.
Shuchi Talati, a scholar-in-residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on solar geoengineering governance and justice, said Make Sunset’s actions could hamper the scientific field, reduce funding, weaken government support for credible research and accelerate call for restrictions study.
The company’s actions have fueled longstanding concerns that a “rogue” actor with no particular understanding of atmospheric science or technology could unilaterally choose to geoengineer the climate without any consensus on whether it could do so — Or what the proper global average temperature should be. That’s because it’s relatively cheap and technically straightforward, at least in a rough way.
David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, warned of this scenario more than a decade ago, noticed A “self-proclaimed protector of the earth with a green finger… who can do a lot of geoengineering on his own,” he cites the classic Goldfinger character from the 1964 James Bond film who was murdered for painting women with gold And be remembered by people.
Some observers are quick to compare Make Sunsets and events ten years ago one of the american entrepreneurs It is said Hundreds of tons of iron sulfate are being dumped into the ocean to foster plankton blooms that help salmon numbers grow and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Critics say it violates international restrictions on so-called iron fertilization, which in part inspire A growing number of businesses offer to sell carbon credits for such work, arguing that this subsequently hinders research efforts in the field.
Pasztor and others stress that Make Sunset’s efforts underscore the urgent need to establish broad-based oversight and clear rules to guide responsible research in geoengineering and help determine if and under what conditions there should be a social license to advance experiments or beyond . As MIT Technology Review first reportedThe Biden administration is developing a federal research plan that will guide scientists on how to conduct geoengineering research.
