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Short abstract

As the climate crisis is increasingly framed as a global catastrophic risk, funding for SRM as a possible emergency response increases. However, the design of the current R&D phase of SRM narrows technological trajectories (with a strong focus on SAI), which constitutes a risk in itself.

Long abstract

Keywords: climate crisis, solar radiation management, technodiversity, global catastrophic risk

As Paul Virilio famously claimed, “every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.” Every technology simultaneously creates its own accident.

For solar radiation management (SRM) as an anticipatory response to catastrophic climate risk, the usual name of such an accident is “termination shock” - a highly disruptive event resulting from a sudden halt of the SRM process that would rapidly increase the global temperature with disastrous consequences.

This accident applies to the deployment phase of SRM, but I argue there is also a hidden risk in the current R&D phase that could exacerbate SRM's epistemic and political vulnerabilities and increase the likelihood of a future termination shock.

To illustrate this point, I will show how current R&D strategies for SRM foster a technological monoculture by focusing narrowly on a single technology: stratosphere aerosol injection (SAI). This approach constrains the range of socio-technical imaginaries available to future societies and creates additional systemic risk by relying on a monotechnological trajectory.

Building on the concept of technodiversity, I will argue for the technodiversification of the present SRM R&D phase and for a multiplication of anticipatory responses to avert future climate breakdown.

To further illustrate this discussion, I will present a comparative analysis of two funding strategies in SRM: the case of a for-profit startup, Stardust Solutions, backed by private venture capital, and the UK government agency ARIA's "Exploring Climate Cooling" funding programme.