Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Geoengineering may be “entirely crazy and quite disconcerting,” but if it could slow the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or take some of “the pain and suffering away,” or help prevent no-longer-fully-natural ecosystems from collapsing, doesn’t it have to be considered? Andy Parker is the project director for the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, which works to expand the “global conversation” around geoengineering. His preferred drug analogy for the technology is chemotherapy. No one in his right mind would undergo chemotherapy were better options available. “We live in a world,” he has said, “where deliberately dimming the fucking sun might be less risky than not doing it.”