Engineering the Climate: Can Injecting Chemicals in the Sky Help Save the Planet? (Professor David Keith)

What if the answer to climate change is not only to cut carbon emissions, but to make the Earth more resilient using tech?

Professor David Keith is one of the world’s leading researchers of geoengineering which aims to do just that. Efforts to capture carbon are already underway, but Professor Keith is particularly interested in sunlight reflection - the controversial idea of cooling the planet by reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. To do this, he wants to release sulphur high into the atmosphere, and believes governments should consider starting within years.

To critics, it’s an arrogant and potentially disastrous attempt to interfere with a climate system we don’t fully understand. But, Professor Keith is now willing to say that we should be more radical in the face of the scale of our climate problem, and that a carefully managed intervention would be worth the downsides.

Gabriel Gatehouse sits in this week, and asks who would control the technology, who would be liable if it went wrong, and whether humanity should have the power to redesign the climate.

Next week, James Marriott speaks to Lamorna Ash about why Generation Z are turning to religion for answers to the problems of the modern world.

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Episodes of Radical are released every Thursday and Monday.

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