Understanding the Urgent Need for Direct Climate Cooling

The intensifying impacts of climate change are exceeding projections and amplifying the risk of catastrophic harm to the environment and society throughout the 21st century. Planned and proposed rates of emissions reduction and removal are not proceeding at a pace or magnitude to meet either the 1.5°C or 2.0°C targets of the Paris Agreement. Moreover, the impacts, damage and loss occurring at today’s 1.2°C of global warming are already significantly disrupting the environment and society. Relying exclusively on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and removal without including climate cooling options is thus proving incompatible with responsible planetary stewardship. Multiple approaches to exerting a cooling influence have the potential to contribute to offset at least some of the projected climate disruption if deployed in the near term. Employed thoughtfully, such approaches could be used to limit global warming to well below 1° C, a level that has led to large reductions in sea ice, destabilization of ice sheets, loss of biodiversity, and transformation of ecosystems. An effective plan for avoiding “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” would include: a) early deployment of one or more direct cooling influence(s), initially focused on offsetting amplified polar warming; b) accelerated reductions in emissions of CO2, methane and other short-lived warming agents; and c) building capacity to remove legacy GHG loadings from the atmosphere. Only the application of emergency cooling “tourniquets,” researched and applied reasonably soon to a “bleeding” Earth, have the potential to slow or reverse ongoing and increasingly severe climate disruption.