Geoengineering: The Controversy Behind Climate Fixes

Geoengineering has been receiving a lot of attention lately as a potential solution to the climate crisis. Popular types of geoengineering include carbon capture and storage efforts and constructing structures that reflect solar radiation.

While the former is about capturing carbon directly from where they are emitted and storing these carbon underground so they don’t enter the atmosphere and cause an enhanced greenhouse effect, the latter is about building structures at high altitudes or even in space to reflect solar radiation and reduce the overall heat input to the Earth.

While both solutions shows a promising potential to help the climate crisis, they are still in doubt. No such solutions have ever been implemented before and we still do not know if they are technologically feasible and without negative side effects. The unknown consequences of altering natural processes are not something humans want to undertake without prior knowledge.

At the end of the day, it is still important to focus on altering the human activities that cause emissions in the first place while developing geoengineering strategies as alternative approaches to resolve the climate crisis.