Read an article about the potential political pitfalls of this idea just yesterday:
It sounds like something out of science fiction: A country suffering from heat, flooding or crop failures decides on its own to send out a fleet of aircraft to spray a fine, sun-blocking mist into the earth’s atmosphere, reducing temperatures and providing relief to parched populations. Other countries view it as a threat to their own citizens and ready a military response.
But members of the U.S. intelligence community and other national security officials were worried enough last year to plot how to avert a war triggered by this kind of climate engineering. In a role-playing exercise, they practiced managing the tensions that would be unleashed, according to people familiar with the exercise, a sign that they see it as a credible threat in need of a strategy.
The practice, known as solar geoengineering, is theoretically possible. And as the world’s most vulnerable populations suffer more sharply from rising temperatures, global decision-makers will likely come under heavy pressure to deploy the technology, scientists and policymakers say. Compared to other methods to combat the effects of climate change, it’s likely to be cheaper and faster.
Because the technique could weaken the sun’s power across the globe — not just above whichever country decided to deploy it — security officials are concerned about the potential to spark conflict, since a single capital could make decisions that shape the entire world’s fate.
“Parts of the U.S. government are rightfully focused on trying better to understand this,” said Sherri Goodman, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, referencing last year’s geoengineering exercise. “If you don’t understand it, you can’t manage it.”
The science is evolving, said Goodman, a longtime expert on the intersection of climate change and security. But global discussions haven’t kept up, leaving a powerful technology largely unregulated internationally.
“It could be weaponized by a country to either try to improve the climate and reduce the temperatures in their own location or against an adversary,” Goodman said. “It could be threatened in a way that could cause fear or panic among populations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/27/geoengineering-security-war/