Experiments in climate control are social as well as scientific. They demand a new way of thinking about contentious technologies, argues Jack Stilgoe.
In the past decade, the UK has developed its own distinctive approach to geoengineering research. The Royal Society’s 2009 assessment of this most controversial of techno-fixes, for example, was both timely and, unusually for a science body, broad in its blend of disciplinary perspectives. The National Academies in the United States, in contrast, only launched their two long-awaited reports on the topic last month.
Some of the questions thrown up by geoengineering—a set of half-baked ideas for combating global warming, either by reflecting sunlight away from the planet or sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—are scientific. How would it work? How much would we need? What would it do to our weather? But others reach way beyond the purview of science: what would it mean to take control of the weather? Who would decide the planet’s temperature? Could we back out if things went wrong?
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