Weather sovereignty: the new geopolitics of atmospheric intervention

详细摘要

As private capital moves into solar geoengineering and Washington and Beijing begin framing atmospheric modification as a matter of national security, the capacity to cool the…

As private capital moves into solar geoengineering and Washington and Beijing begin framing atmospheric modification as a matter of national security, the capacity to cool the planet could become a new arena of great-power competition detrimental to the Global South.

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), a proposed method of cooling the planet by injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect a portion of sunlight, is stretching the boundaries of climate science. Some companies are could well deploy within a decade, perhaps sooner.

Governments have yet to agree on who should control it. If a state or private actor acquires the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere, who decides how, when and where it can be used. Who bears the consequences if it changes rainfall, or disrupts agriculture in another nation-state, or intensifies geopolitical tensions? What happens if a state decides to weaponize the technology?

A report by Dr Trish Lavery of the Centre for Future Generations puts these questions into sharp focus. Her foresight study, entitled Towards Governance of Climate Cooling Approaches, offers four scenarios for 2036 that suggest the politics of atmospheric intervention could become as consequential as the technology itself.

The issue is no longer only whether the technology could reduce global temperatures. It is who might develop it, who would decide when and where it could be used, whose interests would determine its governance, and who would bear the consequences if it went wrong.

One key issue is whether states can retain sovereignty over their weather when others acquire the ability to alter the atmosphere. American policy voices are beginning to describe the ability to modify the climate as a matter of national security and “weather sovereignty”, arguing that Washington cannot afford to leave this capability to strategic rivals.

Lavery points out that temperatures could fall within months, but SAI would neither reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations nor…

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