From Climate Tools to Human Protection: Rethinking Climate Intervention in a Warming World

[Dr. Soumitra Das]

I began to realize that, in debates around SAI, MCB, or CDR, we often lose sight of the primary objective: protecting people from the escalating impacts of climate change.

The central question is not whether SAI or MCB is “right.” It is not mitigation versus adaptation, or CDR versus SRM. We will need all of these tools—and likely different combinations of them—to protect people across regions and over time.

Many of the hardest questions extend beyond science alone. Economics, social acceptance, political feasibility, and governance will ultimately determine what can be deployed—and when. The real challenge is this: how do we protect people in the short and long term while accounting for all these realities?

Even under optimistic assumptions, it will take at least 15–20 years to resolve the scientific, governance, and global coordination questions surrounding potential SAI deployment. During that period, the human costs will continue to mount. Hundreds of millions—potentially far more—will be displaced from their homes. Food and water insecurity will worsen. Heatwaves will claim countless lives. Entire regions may become increasingly difficult—or impossible—to inhabit.

This makes the question unavoidable: what should governments and societies do now? What solutions and policy frameworks should be advanced in the interim? How should governments respond if we tell them that some tools may only be available decades from now? These are the questions that keep me awake.

It is neither realistic nor responsible to ask policymakers to focus narrowly on SAI alone when its potential deployment may still be 15–20 years away. We must offer a coherent package of near-term and long-term solutions—practical, ethical, and politically viable pathways that reduce suffering today while preparing for more ambitious interventions tomorrow.

Over the past decade, an estimated 250 million people—primarily in the Global South—have already been displaced by climate-related impacts. This number is projected to accelerate dramatically, potentially reaching two billion people within the next 20 years. This is not a distant or abstract risk; it is a present and rapidly unfolding humanitarian crisis.

This is why I believe we need a fundamentally different approach—one that is pragmatic, people-centered, and time-aware. I would very much welcome your thoughts on how we should navigate this challenge.

This is precisely what the Climate Intervention Summit is about.

Thank you,

Soumitra

--

Soumitra Das

Chairman and Executive Director, HCI USA

Chairman, HCI India

https://healthyclimateinitiative.org/

[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Soumitra

I have some issues with what you've written below.  No problem with the underlying sentiment or the passion, but I think the framing is a problem.

We should not be talking about 'solutions'.  There is no solution to global warming.  It's a classic wicked problem in Rittel and Webber's terms.  As each intervention attempts to 'solve' it, it will morph into a different problem requiring a different 'solution'.  There's no end point when you can say it's solved.

Climate change and global warming are situations that need to managed, not solved.  While for scientists, the science is all about getting to the 'truth', an in depth understanding of the physical dynamics of the climate system, and how it will respond to this that or the other stimulus, for policymakers it should be about managing risk.  Nothing that will happen in the future can be known with absolute certainty.  Policymakers must weigh the odds that any intervention, including no intervention, will reduce the risk of undesirable outcomes.  Moreover, as the future unfolds, they must continually reassess the situation to decide whether yesterday's policies might be improved in the light of experience, to further reduce the risk of undesirable outcomes, perhaps even undesirable outcomes that hadn't been identified previously.

Frame climate policymaking as a continuous risk management enterprise not as a scientific and engineering problem solving task.

Another reason this is important is that unless people focus on the risks, they won't understand why they need the policies.  We don't buy home insurance because we have a sprinkler system in our house (if you do!) or a fire station round the corner, we buy the insurance because the sprinkler system and the fire fighters will only limit the damage not prevent it.  We buy the insurance because we understand that if our house went up in flames it'd be big deal, even if it wasn't the absolute worst possible fire one could imagine..  We buy the insurance to limit our exposure to a risk that we have thought about and decided that we want to mitigate.

If the focus is on the solutions, the reaction from many will be to ask why they should pay for them.  Isn't that just a solution looking for a problem?  Most people just don't understand how precarious our situation is and how utterly ineffective most government policy responses to it are.  Ignorance really is bliss, until it isn't.

Regards

Robert

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[Douglas Grandt]

Robert, Soumitra, John, Herb et al,

Pondering the two concurrent threads, and merging all the thought expressed, I imagine an “all hands on deck” friendly competitive challenge among the advocates of every plausible means of “protecting people from the escalating impacts of climate change,” as concisely summarized below.

Visually, a horse race or the space race are examples of all-out efforts to win a prize or achieve a priceless goal. 

Not every horse gets the big money, but the best of the best all get something. UK has Grand National, Epsom Derby, Royal Ascot, Cheltenham Gold Cup, etc. and the U.S. has Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, Belmont Stakes, Breeders’ Cup Classic, etc.

J.F. Kennedy aimed for the moon, and set into motion a complex and improbable challenge, which is an example of long-term planning and short term milestones.

What I envision is the all-out effort of a horse race and the complex planning and step-wise deployment that led to the moon landing. Designing and building an AirBus, Boeing 787, NASA Shuttle & I.S.S., SpaceX, new aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine is no less complex, and is done routinely.

P.E.R.T. (Project Evaluation and Review Technique) and Gantt Charts were created to manage seemingly unmanageable projects. The most plausible of the 61 more or less measures so far identified can easily be set up to plan and manage progress independently as well as inter-dependently. No more or less feasible than what NASA and many others have demonstrated.

JFK had the starting gun and funding, then NASA created the plan. Our situation is revered: we must create the plan in order to pitch it to those with the starting gun and funding. An added bonus for us is, stages of governance must be identified in the P.E.R.T. & Gantt charts with milestones for fleshing out and gaining consensus—obviously, there is no time to complete that effort in advance of beginning research & development.

I believe priority number one is to develop a plan that is credible and convincing. Without acknowledging so-called known unknowns and providing for dealing with unknown unknowns, no self-respecting decision maker, billionaire or peer scientist or engineer will give us the time of day.

As a reminder, here’s the timeline between JFK’s speech and the moon landing:

JFK’s Speech: May 25, 1961 - President Kennedy announced to Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the decade’s end.

Project Gemini: The program operated from 1965-1966, with 10 crewed flights launched during this period  . Specifically:

• The first crewed Gemini flight (Gemini III) launched on March 23, 1965 

• The final mission (Gemini XII) launched on November 11, 1966 

Apollo Program: The Apollo program was in development throughout this period:

• Apollo 1 astronauts were killed in a test on January 27, 1967 

• Apollo 10 served as the rehearsal for the moon landing 

• Apollo 11 achieved the moon landing on July 20, 1969 

So in summary: Between JFK’s May 1961 speech and the July 1969 moon landing, Project Gemini operated for about 20 months (March 1965 - November 1966), serving as the crucial intermediate step between Mercury and Apollo. The Apollo program was being developed concurrently and began crewed missions after Gemini concluded, culminating in the successful moon landing.

Source: Claude

Best regards,

Doug Grandt 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 14, 2025, at 5:59 PM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:



<HCI Logo_reszied.jpeg>

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[br...@chesdata.com]

“[P]rotect[ing] people in the short and long term while accounting for all these realities” can be done with adaptation strategies.  In the long run SRM will likely be needed.  Since SRM might take decades to implement we first need to convince politicians that SRM research is needed. To do that

1. We need a “detailed” description of the impacts of a temperature increases in 2050 of 1.5℃, 2.0℃, and 2.5℃  (ecosystems collapse, AMOC, sea level rise, carbon feedbacks, Amazon, Arctic sea ice, albedo, etc.)
2. We then need to “reach an agreement” on the maximum “acceptable” temperature increase in 2050
3. We also need to agree on realistic GHG emissions pathways for 2025 through 2050 that includes albedo changes, reductions in land/ocean sinks, feedbacks, etc.
4. If realistic GHG emissions pathways project a temperature increase greater than the maximum “acceptable” temperature increase in 2050 then hopefully politicians can be convinced that SRM research is needed.

 

Bruce Parker

 

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Bruce--I am not sure why you put SRM off when it is the only way to really limit climate change in the near term. The world reached an agreement on maximum temperature change--and it was already higher than it should have been--and it has not lived up to it. What makes you think that this next time will be any different? And how would agreement possibly be reached when it is different for basically everywhere.

And there is an adage sometimes attributed to Yogi Berra but I think really from Neils Bohr--"Prediction is very hard, particularly of the future." What makes you think there could be agreement on a "detailed" description" of your list of items when there are likely tipping points and also changes that have been underestimated and understated in the past?

A colleague I have in the business community points out how it is the scientific community that has trapped the world in seeking high confidence (so there can never be a crack in the building blocks of the pyramid of knowledge). What is taught in business school is to plan to be resilient to low probability/high consequence ("worst plausible") risks--so make sure to be safe from what is inherently uncertain and even unlikely, but conceivable.

There is then also the intergenerational question--there are changes that may not hit while we are alive but where we have made a commitment that could overwhelm future generations, an example being commitment to a rate of sea level rise of, say, a couple of meters per century. Discount rates seem a quite implausible approach when one be heading toward loss of mass from ice sheets, Amazon biodiversity and carbon sink, etc.

Actually, in my view, it is well past time that SRM research should have been well underway.

Best, Mike

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Doug--I would suggest adding just one contest qualification--and that is timescale. So, one contest goes to the approach that has the largest cooling influence (sorry Herb) by no later than 2035, and a larger influence in 2040 and 2050. A second contest for approaches that would take 10 years longer to get started, etc.

This judgment is actually what Ron, I and the Urgent Response group tried to guesstimate.

Best, Mike

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/DCEEBE10-9271-4B91-AAA1-06AEA4CDCFB5%40mac.com.

[Douglas Grandt]

Thanks for this timing nuance Mike!

Fully agree … makes excellent sense.

Doug G

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 15, 2025, at 11:07 AM, Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:



[H simmens]

Bruce,

I agree with much of what Mike has just said. 

However I think you identified something very critical that I have been mystified about for years now. 

And that is the Urgent need to begin to answer the “At what point” question. 

While Paris did answer the question of what temperature we should aim to stay under no one with influence is discussing the question of what current or projected temperature and other impacts should trigger the safe and effective deployment of cooling. 

Of course answering this question requires recognizing the timeline between agreeing to deploy and actual deployment.  Wayne Gretzky is supposed to have said:

“I skate to where the puck is going to be not where it has been.”

I find it astonishing that attempts to provide a framework for answering this existentially critical question are all but nonexistent. 

(I did come across a paper some years back that made an initial attempt but unfortunately I can’t find the paper now. Does anyone know what I’m referring to?)

I think it represents a huge Inexplicable Blindspot on the part of climate leaders activists and climate researchers particularly those in the SRM and tipping points communities. 

I raised this question at the Arctic Repair conference in Cambridge this past summer. The speaker was talking about the fact that Ocean Visions supports SRM research but not deployment. 

I asked her and everyone in the auditorium at what point would her organization or anyone else sitting there (which included many of the leading SRM researchers from around the world) support the deployment of SRM. Predictably the speaker completely avoided answering my question nor did anyone else respond either publicly or privately to me. 

It’s hard for me to imagine a more important discussion yet no one literally no one in authority or at the major NGO’s seems to be interested in beginning to answer it in a organized rigorous and inclusionary manner. 

Herb

5, at 11:01 AM, 'Michael MacCracken' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



 

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Alan and Herb--Or as is sometimes said--the horse is already out of the Barn. It seems to me that they may not want to be saying that research on SRM should have started long ago as a complement to the other approaches.

I'd also say, and doing so as a scientist in offering this view, that the scientific community got it wrong from the start, in part prodded by the fossil fuel companies, in essentially advocating for the traditional scientific decision framework of wanting high confidence before any finding is agreed to rather than understanding that, in my non-expert view, major (existential) policy decisions have a history of being better when a precautionary or risk avoidance decision framing is used. We put in huge investments in national defense in the hopes of avoiding the risk of war. Accepting that governments would just accept the scientific findings and promptly change over the established global energy system, and making this presumption seemingly with high confidence--or at least so high that it was viewed as essentially immoral to even talk about SRM--I think will be seen as a serious lapse in judgment that, it is turning out, is not something that many in the field are yet willing to accept.

Mike

On 12/15/25 11:56 AM, Alan Kerstein wrote:

Herb,

To me this is like a fire department receiving a fire alarm and thereupon debating how bad the fire needs to be before they go put it out.

Alan

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1AE8DCF2-3C0E-4DA4-836E-6F1EBE68B3BC%40gmail.com.

[Alan Kerstein]

Herb,

To me this is like a fire department receiving a fire alarm and thereupon debating how bad the fire needs to be before they go put it out.

Alan

On Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 8:38 AM H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Herb]

Alan,

But the world doesn’t have a fire department with clear unambiguous authority and resources to avoid and extinguish fires. 

Nor is there agreement that there is even the equivalent of water - a safe and effective means to put out fires. 

Nor is there yet agreement that the fire can’t be put out by other means. 

Herb 

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Dec 15, 2025, at 11:56 AM, Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAH-gPYEHbMF7WvkUEWWo8bEiKSV0EtQNLzJ74tZK7BRHM5_jiw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alan Kerstein]

Herb,

Neither my analogy nor any other analogy is perfect. Since we are critical of people who reject active cooling while proposing alternatives that are no more than magical thinking, let's be careful about magical thinking about a globally legitimated body that will juggle the multitude of intractable uncertainties so deftly as to reach a widely accepted consensus on active cooling so expeditiously as to catalyze the needed actions with the needed alacrity. My gut estimate is that 95% of people who have strong opinions on climate change engage in magical thinking on some aspect of the issue. I'm not optimistic about the possibility of a process for selecting people to be in charge of geoengineering that will produce a team dominated by people drawn from the other 5%.

Alan

[Herb]

Alan,

I’m not optimistic either but it’s really irrelevant whether any of us are optimistic or pessimistic. 

I think groups like ours have to be advocating for rational processes and institutions to be created or designated to address these existential challenges. 

As Robert Tulip has pointed out there are examples of international institutions that have been created or tasked to support, regulate and monitor various international functions and are often reasonably successful in achieving their missions. 

I wonder how many people even sophisticated leaders and decision makers 60 years ago thought that the world would get to at least the first quarter of the 21st century without another nuclear configuration. 

So it can be done however daunting the challenge. 

Why else are we in existence but to use our still minuscule influence to help navigate between no cooling deployment in the coning decades and ineffective - or worse - deployment. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

[Alan Kerstein]

I think there is a legitimate difference of viewpoints here Herd. Just as we wisely remain agnostic about the choice among cooling technologies, I think we should be agnostic about governance procedures. Both of these no-go principles potentially broaden the tent under which we gather the cooling advocates. Also, this sharpens the focus on the key challenge of gaining consensus that cooling is essential as a matter of principle and urgent in the face of vanishing acceptable alternatives.

Alan

[Herb]

Alan,

Just as Ron made an important contribution by listing and briefly describing a variety of well-known and not so well-known cooling techniques in the Urgent Cooling paper written by Ron and colleagues (including me ) so too do I think we can add value by summarizing and proposing new approaches to governance for evaluation by world leaders and the climate cognoscenti. 

For example I have suggested the creation of a blue ribbon type Brundtland Commission to evaluate where we are and what is urgently needed (this would be  a much more effective and influential version of the Climate Overshoot that was established a couple of years ago.) 

The governance challenge is in my view and that I think many other observers the most difficult and real obstacle to progress on cooling. 

Yet perhaps because of the make up of our groups the issue has received little attention  in the past four years and not one report or paper of any significance has come out of HPAC or Planetary restoration as far as I can tell. 

It’s not too late to remedy that. The report probably should not recommend a preferred alternative so it can remain agnostic as you recommend. It could advance the discussion by simply making the case why our current institutional structure is not fit for purpose and what some promising alternatives could be and how they might be able to be advanced. 

Herb 

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Dec 15, 2025, at 1:37 PM, Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Alan Kerstein]

Herb,

I agree with the substance of your response although I think there is a tradeoff between focus and broadening the aperture to add value. The tradeoff is audience dependent, so there should be tailored messages addressing individual groups.

What led me to trigger this kerfuffle was your proposal that your "At what point?" rhetorical device should be addressed in an "organized rigorous and inclusionary manner." The fact that people deflect from this question reflects its rhetorical efficacy. However, asking for a point criterion for any climate policy transition is a gotcha question in view of the inevitable huge uncertainties involved, which are likely to throw sand in the gears of a group tasked with reaching a policy consensus. There are certainly good opportunities to pose the question, but tasking a committee to answer it is not one of them.

Alan