Publication: CNBC

UCLA Expert: Ted Parson: Professor of Environmental Law, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Faculty Co-Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

Synopsis: The term “geoengineering” refers to manipulating the Earth’s climate for human benefit, but in recent years it’s been used as shorthand for “solar geoengineering,” a theoretical process of releasing chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth and mitigate the effects of global warming. It’s controversial because it hasn’t been studied comprehensively, and it's unknown whether the unintended side effects will be better or worse than the impacts of climate change.

UCLA News: It would cost as little as $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, Parson told CNBC in 2022. That’s remarkably cheap compared to other mitigation techniques. “Those following debates on active climate interventions have been expecting — and worrying about — something like this for a few years,” Parson said. He thinks the balloon launches aren’t codified enough for providing real research answers. He also believes injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere shouldn’t be the work of a private company. “There is plenty of incentive for self-interested actors, particularly those with revenues on the line, to misrepresent these. Nothing about this process, except perhaps specific aspects of implementation under some hypothetical future governmental or intergovernmental control, can be entrusted to private firms,” he wrote.

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