Friday Sep. 26, 2025 HPAC NYC Climate Week Session on Climate Intervention
Ron Baiman
How Climate Intervention can Safely, Effectively, Quickly and lnexpensively Cool the Planet
Friday, September 26, 2025
269 4th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
United States
Delay in action to limit climate pollution has
allowed end of century scenarios to prematurely initiate. Earth systems
have begun to degrade and once degradation begins it does not
self-restore unless the warming that caused it is removed. Degradation
comes with reduction and reversal of Earth systems’ emissions
sequestration that has already begun, and has the capacity to dwarf
humankind’s total emissions in the very near term. This means our
current climate culture’s 1.5 degree C above normal warming limit is now
too warm and we must restore our climate back to within the natural
variation of our Earth systems’ evolution at less than 1 degree C
warming above normal. We must do this before these systems become so
degraded that collapses become irreversible. To accomplish this and
prevent, quoting Hobbes: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
existential futures for much of humanity, emergency implementation of
The Climate Triad Approach - Cool, Reduce, Remove - is required. As the
point of no return could be as soon as mid-century, we must quickly cool
our planet to give us time to reduce and draw down GHGs at a large
enough scale to stabilize the climate and begin to regenerate nature.
This will require net-zero emissions and removing vast amounts of legacy
greenhouse gases from our atmosphere and oceans.
This event focuses on the highest priority near-term cooling, or
“climate intervention”, aspect of The Climate Triad approach that must
be accomplished in a short time or all other actions may become moot.
“Climate intervention” refers to additional ways to seek to counter or
counterbalance climate change induced effects and impacts that involve:
(1) reflecting solar radiation or modifying long wave radiation, (2) are
global or hemispheric in scope and (3) have to potential be deployed at
scale within the next 20 years.
Our event will be composed of two panels of three speakers, and then a
single panel of all six, all addressing the issue of why near-term
climate intervention is now necessary to supplement GHG emission
reduction and draw down policies. Moderator (Ron Baiman) will introduce
the panels and each of the speakers in the following order. For the
first panel: 1) Bill Blecker will welcome attendees to the Brooklyn
Society for Ethical Culture, pass the hat,and speak about climate
organizing, 2) Aria McKenna will speak about real hope for a safe
climate, and 3) Herb Simmens will talk about the climate policy triad.
Each speaker will speak for about 10 minutes and this will be followed
by about 20 minutes of questions from the audience. After a 10 minute
bathroom break, the second panel consisting of: 4) Rafe Pomerance on
climate intervention and an upper limit metric to sea-level rise, 5) Ron
Baiman on near-term climate cooling and 6) Jake Schwartz on federal and
NGO climate intervention politics, will convene. This panel will follow
a similar schedule. For the remaining time the floor will be thrown
open for questions to all six panelists. Three panelists: Bill Blecker,
Herb Simmens,and Ron Baiman will be on-site, and three: Aria McKenna,
Rafe Pomerance, and Jake Schwartz will be remote.
This is the registration link:
When: Sep 26, 2025 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://benu.zoom.us/meeting/register/fCsgl6shTKeJLDFY6nsMPw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.