Full Title: U.S. National Interest, Climate Engineering, and International Law
Author(s): Lee Lane
Publisher(s): Hudson Institute
Publication Date: April 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Despite the failure of the 2010 greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade bill, President Obama is plainly resolved to press ahead with new plans to limit emissions. Most Republicans in Congress are equally determined to block this effort. In effect, the United States seems to be locked in the same climate policy stalemate that has prevailed for the last twenty years.
At least some people from each side of the debate, then, should welcome a way of lessening the perceived risks of both climate change and the measures proposed to counter it. And such an option may, indeed, exist. It is called climate engineering (CE).
GHGs in the atmosphere absorb heat and then radiate some of it back to Earth’s surface; hence, higher GHG levels raise surface temperatures. The more promising kinds of CE do not lower GHG concentrations; rather they would reflect back into space a small amount of the incoming sunlight; all else being equal, temperatures fall although GHG levels do not.2 CE, therefore, may lessen at least some of the risks of global warming.