Presenting: Catalyst - Solar Geoengineering: Is It Worth the Risk?

What It Covers

Solar geoengineering could cool Earth by blocking sunlight through stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, or space mirrors. Climate modeler Dan Vizzioni explains the science, costs, risks, and governance challenges of planetary-scale climate intervention.

Key Questions Answered

• •Stratospheric aerosol injection cost: Cooling the planet by half a degree Celsius would cost only 1-2 billion dollars annually by injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, mimicking volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo which injected 10 teragrams and cooled Earth temporarily.
• •Timeline urgency: Solar geoengineering could work within years while carbon dioxide removal solutions require 50 years to scale meaningfully. With Earth only 0.3 degrees from the 1.5 Celsius Paris target, faster intervention may be necessary for peak shaving during CDR scale-up.
• •Regional climate uncertainty: Solar geoengineering would not restore pre-industrial climate conditions because sulfates cool differently than CO2 warms. Regional precipitation patterns, especially monsoons critical for agriculture in India and Africa, remain poorly understood and could shift unpredictably with intervention.
• •Governance vulnerability: The low cost enables rogue actors to unilaterally deploy solar geoengineering without international consensus. No framework exists to determine who controls the planetary thermostat or how to balance different regions benefiting from different cooling levels, creating geopolitical risk.