The controversial concept of geoengineering—intentionally manipulating the environment to artificially lower temperatures around the globe—is gaining increasing attention from scholars, scientists and policymakers. But while the idea may offer the chance to pause warming long enough for decarbonization, potentially avoiding catastrophic climate overshoot, the very notion of geoengineering has become a lightning rod for questions on how humanity might enact such a planet-scale intervention—and whether it is even ethical to try. 

As these societal questions swirl, postdoctoral researcher Arthur Obst convened a two-day conference called “Geoengineering in Crisis: The Princeton Workshop on Geoengineering Ethics and Governance” at Princeton. Hosted by the Climate Futures Initiative in Science, Values, and Policy (CFI), and co-sponsored the High Meadows Environmental Institute and the University Center for Human Values, the workshop brought together scholars from across the disciplines and around the world during New York Climate Week to consider multiple dimensions of geoengineering, from the scientific and political to the moral and philosophical.