Geoengineering – løst beskrevet som bruk av teknologi for å endre jordens klima – kan ifølge en artikkel i Newsweek senke temperaturen på jorden utrolig mye billigere enn utslippskutt.
Britain's authoritative 2006 report on the cost of cutting emissions enough to stabilize temperatures put the price tag at about 1 percent of the world's annual GDP; other estimates run as high as 4 percent. The options for cooling the planet by deflecting solar rays are far cheaper: for one thousandth of 1 percent of GDP, "you could bring on an ice age," says Keith.
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Dette betyr – hevder artikkelen – at vi både risikerer at den politiske viljen til tunge forhandlinger og dyre utslipssreduserende tiltak forvitrer, og at enkelte land kan komme til å gjøre dette på egen hånd.
The technology is potentially so cheap that virtually any nation, or at least a middle-rate power, could undertake a climate-cooling project on its own. And as the grand river-diversion projects of the former Soviet Union and China have shown, certain kinds of regimes are far more confident of their ability to reshape the environment. It's entirely possible that someone is going to use the technology eventually, especially in countries where droughts and other climate-related weather become a political issue. "If one country can do it, another can," says Scott Barrett, an economist at Johns Hopkins University. "Along with climate change, there'll be an increase in political tensions."
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