New planet-changing geoengineering technology is available to help humanity combat an existential security threat. However, like atomic fission, this technology is not to be jumped at without caution.

This year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Baruch Plan. Almost no one knows this, or if they do, they probably don’t remember who Bernard Baruch was, or what his eponymous plan was for. But the Baruch Plan of 1946 was our first and last real attempt at world governance of nuclear weapons. Three-quarters of a century later, the ill-fated effort carries important lessons for addressing the crisis of climate change.

“If solar radiation management were done well—that is, the science is right, the engineering is right, and the policy and governance frameworks around all of the stuff work—then solar radiation management could be a really important, positive contribution to humanity’s responding to climate change,” says Simon Nicholson, associate professor at American University’s School of International Service and co-founder of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment in this week’s Friday Podcast interview with ECSP senior advisor and Ohio University professor, Geoff Dabelko. “But, there are all kinds of risks associated with this endeavor.”

“Right now, it’s the Wild West in regard to governance with geoengineering,” said Paul Wapner, a professor at the School of International Service at American University at a recent panel about solar radiation management (SRM) at the Arizona State University’s Washington Center. According to the Governing Solar Radiation Management report which was the focus of the event, SRM, which theoretically would cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space, may be a viable last-resort option if climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts fail. Wapner said that “there’s a danger in SRM, there’s a danger in climate change. And, balancing those risks is part of the exercise and will continue to be part of the exercise.”

As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, known as geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies.  However, geoengineering technologies could disrupt the global ecological status quo, and could pose a potentially coercive (and very serious) threat to peace. Is it possible to obtain the potential benefits of these game-changing technologies, while avoiding spurring violence and conflict?  In a recent article in Strategic Studies Quarterly, we argue that just war theory—which defines the concepts of “right” and “wrong” in warfare—could provide ethical standards for security decision-makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used to address the climate challenge.

“Climate engineering can be a way to build a better world,” said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford University during a recent virtual workshop on the promises and pitfalls of climate engineering held by the Institute on Science for Global Policy, in partnership with the Forum for Climate Geoengineering Assessment at American University, and the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Almost three decades ago, at a conference at the Woods Hole Institute, oceanographer John Martin said with “a half a tanker of iron…I will give you the next ice age.”

The state of the global environment is terrible – and deteriorating. The globalization of industrial production and the consumptive habits of 7 billion people have created the Anthropocene, a geologic age in which the actions of humans are the primary determinant of the Earth’s natural systems. This shift creates a profound new form of environmental interdependence, of which climate change is only the most salient example.