In the face of stalled progress in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, decision makers are beginning to take a serious look at climate engineering. Climate engineering (or geoengineering) describes a set of ideas to deliberately modify the climate by reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet while other, more permanent methods of addressing climate change are ramped up. Climate engineering is being increasingly talked about by scientists and policy makers. An informed public is essential to those discussions.
The U.S. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently published a report outlining a federal research program for geoengineering, recommending hundreds of millions of dollars of funding. Given the rapid acceleration of research in climate engineering, as well as the accelerating pace of climate change, decisions about whether and how geoengineering will be deployed are likely coming in the next few decades. We believe that such decisions should be as well-informed as possible. Part of the road toward accomplishing that is ensuring a well-educated public who will elect decision makers or serve as decision makers themselves.