ENV 568a () / 2024-2025

Geoengineering in the Context of Climate Overshoot (Fall-1 Aug 28-Oct 11)

Credits: 1.5 Fall 2024: Tu, 2:30-5:20, Kroon G01

Despite dire warnings from the IPCC and earnest pledges of various governments and other institutions including Yale, our planet is likely to surpass the 1.5°C temperature anomaly threshold in this decade, placing us in the dangerous realm of temperature “overshoot”.  The course will start by examining our likely climate trajectory before critically examining the level of optimism that surrounds many proposed mitigation solutions.  We will then delve into the toolkit of climate responses that would become relevant in an overshoot scenario – not merely further mitigation and adaptation, but also negative emissions technologies and strategies to reflect incoming sunlight.  We will examine not only the technological, economic, and political feasibility of these potential interventions, but also their governance requirements and ethical implications.  As I have found little literature illustrating what life in an overshoot world might entail, we will create some.  Our final project will be to host a “cli-fi” short-story contest wherein students will be asked to envision what they might see with their own eyes should the Earth transit 2°C in mid-century.