The Long Heat

Climate Politics When Its Too Late
A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster, by the bestselling authors of Overshoot
The world is crossing the 1.5C global warming limit, perhaps exceeding 2C soon after. What is to be done when these boundaries, set by the Paris Agreement, have been passed? In the overshoot era, schemes proliferate for muscular adaptation or for new technologies to turn the heat down at a later date by removing CO2 from the air or blocking sunlight. Such technologies are by no means safe; they come with immense risks and provide an excuse for those who would prefer to avoid limiting emissions in the present. But do they also hold out some potential? Can the catastrophe be reversed, masked or simply adapted to once it is a fact? Or will any such roundabout measures simply make things worse?

The Long Heat maps the new front lines in the struggle for a liveable pl