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Climate engineering needs a clean bill of health

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 843–845 (2018)Cite this article

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Climate change will almost certainly cause millions of deaths. Climate engineering might prevent this, but benefits — and risks — remain mostly unevaluated. Now is the time to bring planetary health research into climate engineering conversations.

Climate change is currently on track to reshape the global health landscape in potentially catastrophic ways. Warming temperatures pose direct health hazards such as heat stress, while increased food insecurity and the expansion of infectious diseases due to climate change represent more complex threats. These negative health impacts could be reduced by strong and immediate action to decrease GHG emissions, but progress is slow. Global emissions are still not decreasing and existing Nationally Determined Contributions on mitigation are unlikely to keep global warming ‘well below’ 2 °C (ref.1), the target in the Paris Agreement for avoiding dangerous climate change. As a result, policymakers are increasingly discussing more radical options to limit climate change — specifically, climate engineering2,3,4.

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Fig. 1: A risk–risk framework for assessing the potential health impacts of climate engineering.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under funding received from the National Science Foundation (grant no. DBI-1639145).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, Annapolis, MD, USA

    Colin J. Carlson & Christopher H. Trisos

  2. Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Georgetown, WA, USA

    Colin J. Carlson

  3. African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, CT, South Africa

    Christopher H. Trisos

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  1. Colin J. Carlson
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Correspondence to Colin J. Carlson.

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Carlson, C.J., Trisos, C.H. Climate engineering needs a clean bill of health. Nature Clim Change 8, 843–845 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0294-7

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