The politics and governance of research into solar geoengineering

What is it about?

How does researching 'solar geoengineering' potentially create not just technologies that cool the Earth, but also criteria for evaluating them, the publics asked to approve them, and the international governance to control them? This article explains the politics that makes governing research into solar geoengineering both important and difficult.

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Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Research is never neutral, but when it is intended to lead to the creation of potentially planet-altering technologies it is especially important to understand how research - deliberately or inadvertently - brings things into the world, changes perceptions of a problem, affects other solutions, strengthens some actors while weakening others, and provides a new language and occasion for opinions and perspectives to form around new publics.