MEERTALK May 2025

DIMMING THE SUN - The Urgent Case for Geoengineering
with Thomas Ramge

Solar geoengineering is taboo among politicians, scientists, and the IPCC. We will most likely have to dim the sun before climate goes off the rails. It is time to give the debate on climate policy a new twist that explores geoengineering as a stopgap solution to gain time for the transition into a post-fossil age. In his talk, Thomas reflects on...

• How solar geoengineering works
• Risks, unknowns and research needed to mitigate these risks
• Why we need a new global governance structure for geoengineering safeguarding the rights of climate-vulnerable countries
• How geoengineering should not justify burning fossil fuels
• Why we should start this debate today

Dimming the sun is the methadone program of carbon-addicted humanity. It's cheap and works quickly, but unfortunately, it doesn't offer a long-term solution. It would be great if humanity could forego solar geoengineering and get climate change under control by rapid decarbonization. But how likely is this? In a realistic scenario, shading the Earth during a transition period can help us to finally move away from carbon and, at the same time, mitigate the dire climate consequences during the withdrawal phase – no more, no less. In the long term, we carbon junkies have to beat our addiction.

Dr. Thomas Ramge has published more than twenty nonfiction books, including “Who's Afraid of AI?”, “On the Brink of Utopia”, “Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data”, and “The Global Economy as You've Never Seen It”. His work has received numerous publishing awards, including the German Essay Prize, the Axiom Business Book Award, the getAbstract International Book Prize 2018, and the the PWC Best Business Book Award (on Technology and Innovation).

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