Why the best climate solutions don't get a hearing

You can't win an argument if you sound like a Bond villain.

Increasing the earth’s albedo —basically, its brightness— is our best shot at coping with the ecological disaster that unchecked climate change would bring. Because, by reflecting more sunlight back out into space before it reaches the ground, these solutions cool the earth directly. The idea is scientifically sound, technically feasible, and really quite affordable.

Yet the UN refuses to discuss them, and they hardly get talked about in the mainstream climate debate.

Why?

The problem, I think, is terrible public communications.

The word usually used to describe these proposals is a toxic brand, bringing forth all kinds of nasty associations. Too often, people recoil instinctively more to the way the ideas are presented than what they’re actually about. Because it doesn’t matter what the science says, there is no chance normies will ever think it’s a good idea to inject sulfuric acid into the stratosphere.

You sound like a psychopath even just talking about it!

I think of this as The Bond Villain Trap. If your climate idea sounds like something the villain in a James Bond movie might say when discussing his secret plans, you need to just stop. It doesn’t matter how scientifically astute or technically accomplished the proposal is, if talking about it makes you sound like a Goldfinger, it’s going nowhere.

It’s no wonder. Politicians shrink from saying anything that could play badly on social media. Responsible commentators, careful of their reputations, steer clear of proposals that are so easily caricatured.

1% Brighter’s goal is to break the senseless taboo on these ideas. The language we use hasn’t been helping. It’s language developed by scientists and engineers for use in professional settings. Much of it sounds properly crazy in the ears of normal people.

We need to be much more sensitive about how we discuss albedo based solutions if we’re going to bring them into the climate mainstream. We need to be smarter about gauging what might become publicly acceptable, and what never will be.

To this end, I propose Three Principles for communications that are 1% brighter:

1. Don’t say the G-word. The usual portmanteau for discussing albedo-based climate strategies is toxic. It drips with technocratic hubris, makes it sound like you’re some lunatic bent on re-engineering the entire planet or —worse— the sun itself. The word itself makes you sound like a Bond villain. I won’t use it. You shouldn’t either.

2. Let go of stratospheric dreams. The scientists who are into albedo-modification mostly got into it after learning of the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which cooled the planet by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. I fully get it why scientists’ interest was piqued by this. But you cannot advocate pumping weird chemicals into the stratosphere without sounding like a Bond Villain. It’s a losing game.

3. Embrace water. Water isn’t scary. Albedo-solutions that rely on water face much lower obstacles to public acceptability. Marine Sky Brightening, in particular, is ideally placed to disrupt the taboo. Spraying sea-water over the sea doesn’t offend the public’s intuition in the way other albedo-based solutions would.

My goal is to disrupt the taboo on albedo-based solutions. Which is why I’m going to be writing quite a lot about Marine Sky Brightening, and not very much about other albedo-based techniques.