Geoengineering faces a local vote with global consequences
The fate of the nation’s first outdoor experiment of the potential to limit global warming by altering clouds will be determined this week by a handful of local officials in the San Francisco Bay Area. But before the city council of Alameda, elected by a community of 77,000 people, decides on whether to allow the resumption of the internationally significant research, it will discuss replacing the roof of a senior center and other municipal issues. The consideration of the marine cloud brightening study — official, agenda item “7-B” — stands to be one of the first consequential public hearings on solar geoengineering in the nation. The unusual situation set to play out Tuesday night illustrates just how hard it is to test technologies that might be used in the future to brighten clouds or spray aerosols in the stratosphere — promising but ethically fraught ways to turn down the planet’s thermostat by reflecting sunlight back into space.