Paul, I respect your work and really appreciate you engaging with climate interventions.
However, 2 issues:
1. Please correct your assertion that Mexico has banned solar geoengineering and note your mistake. Mexico has not 'banned solar geoengineering', nor does the article you link to assert that they have done this. No nation has banned solar geoengineering. Claiming our actions have resulted in non-existent national bans may dissuade companies and nations from taking the rapid action to Cool Earth that the climate emergency demands.
2. You seem to view Nori (and broadly the field of CCS) as a success story: a model for us to emulate. Why? We emit record amounts of net greenhouse gases every year. If this is success, what would failure have looked like?
Hey Luke, thanks for the correction. You weren't the only person to reach out about that, and I've corrected the article and added a note at the top. You are correct that no nation has banned solar geoengineering, though three US states have passed legislation to ban experimentation to modify temperatures. Those cases (FL, LA, TN) are plausibly outliers from what I discussed in this article, as they seem to be driven mostly by chemtrails conspiracy theories. Though I could also see the case where they are supportive of my argument as well.
On your second point, if that's the impression you got from this article and other things I've published (e.g. https://youtu.be/AczF3Eh9T_E?si=Y-CR_3Jqk6ZZ95HQ ), then I am somehow failing in communicating my message. The CDR industry has not had any real or significant impact on atmospheric GHG levels. And my intent with sharing the anecdote in this article was to say, "We made incorrect assumptions about how we could sell carbon removals, and look how that ended up." Meaning, it didn't work, we should learn from that lesson, and take different approaches going forward.
I'll follow up on email about your last bit as I think that's a great idea.
Hi Paul, my main concern here is the engagement process, but first I want to challenge the claim "fewer than 15% of British MPs in one survey knew that global emissions needed to peak by 2025 for any chance at 1.5°C". This begs the question, assuming the dubious proposition that emission peaking is determinant for temperature peaking. It seems far more likely that albedo will be the main variable controlling planetary heat, and that restored albedo could return the planet below 1.5 even while emissions continue. The claim you quote comes from the IPCC, and is constrained by the conflict of interest generated by its advocacy for renewable energy as the primary climate response.
On your ideas about engaging with government about sunlight reflection, I doubt this will get far until key industries who face commercial damage from heat come on board. So I would suggest engaging more intensively with insurance, reinsurance and actuarial studies based on the UK Exeter Climate Scorpion reports, in order to mobilise the constituency of support needed to lobby governments effectively. In the US, corporate lobbying outweighs community lobbying by about 100 to 1 in terms of funding. Sunlight needs a corporate lobby to get proper government engagement. https://actuaries.org.uk/media/g1qevrfa/climate-scorpion.pdf
Luke Kemp, author of the widely discussed Goliath thesis, is a Climate Scorpion co-author. He might be a good entry point.
I have been looking into the risk industry generally, for that aforementioned research work. My initial conclusions have been that 1) they view SRM (if they have a view at all) as creating net *more* risk, and they hardly discuss any of the potential benefits (https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sonar/sonar2023/solar-radiation-risks-climate-change.html), and 2) It seems like with the sheer amount of damages already coming from flooding, wildfires, droughts, etc. they seem to be more focused on basic adaptation and resilience measures. For instance, this webinar was from last October, hosted by the Geneva Association, the insurance industry's international trade group" https://youtu.be/RuqbN6ypgw4
The conversation is very limited to resilience and things like changing building codes to include more firebreaks around homes. I intend to write more about this, because they seem overwhelmed just by the near term risks.
As always you bring a fresh and important perspective to this critical discussion Paul.
The Theory of Change articulated here deserves broad exposure and discussion as it differs from the perspectives shared by many of the few of us who are advocates for direct climate cooling within a triad based approach to reducing temperatures and ultimately restoring a safe climate.
With regard to targeting the insurance sector particularly the casualty industry it seems that in a number of important countries including Australia and the United States the industry is ahead of the game achieving record profits.
The big companies are getting larger and more powerful as they are able to raise rates faster than their exposure increases and they are effectively shedding risk by withdrawing from the most vulnerable areas and shifting risk to either the individual property owner and or socializing the risk through government supported or run risk pools.
At SOME point this successful strategy will no longer work and they and the rest of us will be forced to deal with the consequences of losses so high and so pervasive and so frequent as to topple even the largest companies.
But I fear that point will come much too late and perhaps it is already much too late.
Disaster capitalism is quite resilient and is likely to remain so until it confronts the Seneca Cliff popularized by Ugo Bardi - “Fortune is slow but ruin is rapid”
Which is another version of the now famous lines from Hemmingway‘s the Sun Also Rises.
How did you go bankrupt?
Two ways
Gradually then suddenly.
I’m afraid and I suspect you are that we are much closer to the Seneca Cliff and suddenly than is comfortable.
Which is why nothing is more important for those small number of us promoting approaches that call for direct cooling to urgently coalesce around a shared theory of change as a basis for our advocacy.
Unfortunately the Healthy Planet Action Coalition that I cofounded has yet to articulate such a theory.
It seems that the establishment - if that’s the right word - cooling entities such as SRM 360. Reflective and DSG have a theory of change the focuses on the belief that society operates in an ultra rational way and the slow and steady accumulation of information about the impacts of SRM will at some undefined date in some undefined manner reach a group of undefined policy makers who will carefully sit around conference tables stroking their chins as they determine whether and how to deploy direct cooling.
Hi Herb, thanks for the comment. It's tough, because obviously I agree with you that there are some very large threats approaching (and could come more soon than we are ready to accept), and because of that, I would love to see rapid action taking place. I wrote in "The Stabilization Framework":
"If we were ready—if we had done the research, built the governance frameworks, established international coordination mechanisms, and developed public understanding—I would support deploying stabilization interventions today. The suffering that climate change is already causing, and will increasingly cause, argues for acting quickly once we know how to act responsibly. But the “if we were ready” in that sentence is doing a lot of work. We’re not ready. We need to get ready. And getting ready requires being able to have the conversation."
So I do believe we should be enacting cooling interventions as soon as we can. But my argument in this article is that the mechanism really matters quite a bit. Calls for cooling without going through the institutional groundwork of getting buy-in that the problem is severe enough to respond to this way will not only fall on deaf ears, but also risk turning a neutral audience into an opponent.
Hi Paul, my point about the claim that "global emissions needed to peak by 2025 for any chance at 1.5°C" was that it gets presented as an objective scientific fact, when in reality it is an exercise in partisan political influence from IPCC. Such dressing up of opinion as fact is a syndrome that has diminished public trust in science, causing politicians to stop listening to advocacy for emission reduction. You cannot blame politicians for failing to "know" something that is just a tendentious opinion. IPCC appears to assign high and low confidence to various assertions like this based more on politics than on science. Given that IPCC systematically excludes discussion of sunlight reflection from projections like this one, it is wrong to present its claims as authoritative.
Fair enough! But I guess I see it like, even that (plausibly false) belief would be nice in comparison to where our politics currently stands. But I take your point and don't disagree.
The dilemma here arises from the problem of how to deal with ignorance. Is it better to present something that is within their existing horizon (speeding up decarbonisation) as acceptable, or is it better to call for a paradigm shift (sunlight reflection) and do the patient work to overcome the incomprehension and exclusion that this encounters?
Since it is emerging that decarbonisation is marginal to climate change, and that the current political consensus creates significant blockages for sunlight reflection (opportunity cost and crowding out), I see it as important not to give oxygen to dubious IPCC speculation by treating it as fact.
Paul, I respect your work and really appreciate you engaging with climate interventions.
However, 2 issues:
1. Please correct your assertion that Mexico has banned solar geoengineering and note your mistake. Mexico has not 'banned solar geoengineering', nor does the article you link to assert that they have done this. No nation has banned solar geoengineering. Claiming our actions have resulted in non-existent national bans may dissuade companies and nations from taking the rapid action to Cool Earth that the climate emergency demands.
2. You seem to view Nori (and broadly the field of CCS) as a success story: a model for us to emulate. Why? We emit record amounts of net greenhouse gases every year. If this is success, what would failure have looked like?
Happy to speak more in-depth, ideally publicly.
-Luke
Hey Luke, thanks for the correction. You weren't the only person to reach out about that, and I've corrected the article and added a note at the top. You are correct that no nation has banned solar geoengineering, though three US states have passed legislation to ban experimentation to modify temperatures. Those cases (FL, LA, TN) are plausibly outliers from what I discussed in this article, as they seem to be driven mostly by chemtrails conspiracy theories. Though I could also see the case where they are supportive of my argument as well.
On your second point, if that's the impression you got from this article and other things I've published (e.g. https://youtu.be/AczF3Eh9T_E?si=Y-CR_3Jqk6ZZ95HQ ), then I am somehow failing in communicating my message. The CDR industry has not had any real or significant impact on atmospheric GHG levels. And my intent with sharing the anecdote in this article was to say, "We made incorrect assumptions about how we could sell carbon removals, and look how that ended up." Meaning, it didn't work, we should learn from that lesson, and take different approaches going forward.
I'll follow up on email about your last bit as I think that's a great idea.
Hi Paul, my main concern here is the engagement process, but first I want to challenge the claim "fewer than 15% of British MPs in one survey knew that global emissions needed to peak by 2025 for any chance at 1.5°C". This begs the question, assuming the dubious proposition that emission peaking is determinant for temperature peaking. It seems far more likely that albedo will be the main variable controlling planetary heat, and that restored albedo could return the planet below 1.5 even while emissions continue. The claim you quote comes from the IPCC, and is constrained by the conflict of interest generated by its advocacy for renewable energy as the primary climate response.
On your ideas about engaging with government about sunlight reflection, I doubt this will get far until key industries who face commercial damage from heat come on board. So I would suggest engaging more intensively with insurance, reinsurance and actuarial studies based on the UK Exeter Climate Scorpion reports, in order to mobilise the constituency of support needed to lobby governments effectively. In the US, corporate lobbying outweighs community lobbying by about 100 to 1 in terms of funding. Sunlight needs a corporate lobby to get proper government engagement. https://actuaries.org.uk/media/g1qevrfa/climate-scorpion.pdf
Luke Kemp, author of the widely discussed Goliath thesis, is a Climate Scorpion co-author. He might be a good entry point.
Hi Robert, thank you for sharing this document! It's actually very relevant to some research work I am doing right now.
To your first point, I mean, I agree with you that albedo is becoming the more important lever, but I do think it still relevant that lawmakers don't even understand that much about emissions when that's the dominant narrative that actually does get a lot of airtime. But I was just quoting one of the emergency briefing experts who wrote that in this piece: https://theconversation.com/what-we-told-uk-leaders-about-climate-and-nature-at-a-national-emergency-briefing-270992 And he was referencing this study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02655-w
I have been looking into the risk industry generally, for that aforementioned research work. My initial conclusions have been that 1) they view SRM (if they have a view at all) as creating net *more* risk, and they hardly discuss any of the potential benefits (https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sonar/sonar2023/solar-radiation-risks-climate-change.html), and 2) It seems like with the sheer amount of damages already coming from flooding, wildfires, droughts, etc. they seem to be more focused on basic adaptation and resilience measures. For instance, this webinar was from last October, hosted by the Geneva Association, the insurance industry's international trade group" https://youtu.be/RuqbN6ypgw4
The conversation is very limited to resilience and things like changing building codes to include more firebreaks around homes. I intend to write more about this, because they seem overwhelmed just by the near term risks.
As always you bring a fresh and important perspective to this critical discussion Paul.
The Theory of Change articulated here deserves broad exposure and discussion as it differs from the perspectives shared by many of the few of us who are advocates for direct climate cooling within a triad based approach to reducing temperatures and ultimately restoring a safe climate.
With regard to targeting the insurance sector particularly the casualty industry it seems that in a number of important countries including Australia and the United States the industry is ahead of the game achieving record profits.
The big companies are getting larger and more powerful as they are able to raise rates faster than their exposure increases and they are effectively shedding risk by withdrawing from the most vulnerable areas and shifting risk to either the individual property owner and or socializing the risk through government supported or run risk pools.
At SOME point this successful strategy will no longer work and they and the rest of us will be forced to deal with the consequences of losses so high and so pervasive and so frequent as to topple even the largest companies.
But I fear that point will come much too late and perhaps it is already much too late.
Disaster capitalism is quite resilient and is likely to remain so until it confronts the Seneca Cliff popularized by Ugo Bardi - “Fortune is slow but ruin is rapid”
Which is another version of the now famous lines from Hemmingway‘s the Sun Also Rises.
How did you go bankrupt?
Two ways
Gradually then suddenly.
I’m afraid and I suspect you are that we are much closer to the Seneca Cliff and suddenly than is comfortable.
Which is why nothing is more important for those small number of us promoting approaches that call for direct cooling to urgently coalesce around a shared theory of change as a basis for our advocacy.
Unfortunately the Healthy Planet Action Coalition that I cofounded has yet to articulate such a theory.
It seems that the establishment - if that’s the right word - cooling entities such as SRM 360. Reflective and DSG have a theory of change the focuses on the belief that society operates in an ultra rational way and the slow and steady accumulation of information about the impacts of SRM will at some undefined date in some undefined manner reach a group of undefined policy makers who will carefully sit around conference tables stroking their chins as they determine whether and how to deploy direct cooling.
Hi Herb, thanks for the comment. It's tough, because obviously I agree with you that there are some very large threats approaching (and could come more soon than we are ready to accept), and because of that, I would love to see rapid action taking place. I wrote in "The Stabilization Framework":
"If we were ready—if we had done the research, built the governance frameworks, established international coordination mechanisms, and developed public understanding—I would support deploying stabilization interventions today. The suffering that climate change is already causing, and will increasingly cause, argues for acting quickly once we know how to act responsibly. But the “if we were ready” in that sentence is doing a lot of work. We’re not ready. We need to get ready. And getting ready requires being able to have the conversation."
So I do believe we should be enacting cooling interventions as soon as we can. But my argument in this article is that the mechanism really matters quite a bit. Calls for cooling without going through the institutional groundwork of getting buy-in that the problem is severe enough to respond to this way will not only fall on deaf ears, but also risk turning a neutral audience into an opponent.
Hi Paul, my point about the claim that "global emissions needed to peak by 2025 for any chance at 1.5°C" was that it gets presented as an objective scientific fact, when in reality it is an exercise in partisan political influence from IPCC. Such dressing up of opinion as fact is a syndrome that has diminished public trust in science, causing politicians to stop listening to advocacy for emission reduction. You cannot blame politicians for failing to "know" something that is just a tendentious opinion. IPCC appears to assign high and low confidence to various assertions like this based more on politics than on science. Given that IPCC systematically excludes discussion of sunlight reflection from projections like this one, it is wrong to present its claims as authoritative.
Fair enough! But I guess I see it like, even that (plausibly false) belief would be nice in comparison to where our politics currently stands. But I take your point and don't disagree.
The dilemma here arises from the problem of how to deal with ignorance. Is it better to present something that is within their existing horizon (speeding up decarbonisation) as acceptable, or is it better to call for a paradigm shift (sunlight reflection) and do the patient work to overcome the incomprehension and exclusion that this encounters?
Since it is emerging that decarbonisation is marginal to climate change, and that the current political consensus creates significant blockages for sunlight reflection (opportunity cost and crowding out), I see it as important not to give oxygen to dubious IPCC speculation by treating it as fact.