Harvard Professor David Keith Discusses Potential Promises and Pitfalls of Solar Geoengineering in New Episode of “Environmental Insights”

February 7, 2020
David Keith and Robert Stavins
Robert Stavins interviews David Keith for Environmental Insights

CAMBRIDGE MA. – David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, discussed his groundbreaking research and policy work in the field of solar geoengineering in the newest episode of Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” Listen to the interview here.

A full transcript of the interview is available here. 

Hosted by Robert N. Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, Environmental Insights is intended to promote public discourse on important issues at the intersection of economics and environmental policy.

Keith is renowned for his work at the intersection of climate science, energy technology, and public policy over the past 25 years. A Canadian native, Keith is faculty director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, a Harvard-wide interfaculty research initiative which aims to further critical research on both the science and governance of solar geoengineering. While best known for his work on geoengineering, Keith has also conducted extensive research on carbon capture and storage, and is the founder of Carbon Engineering, a company which develops technologies for direct air capture.

In the interview, Keith mentioned that the work he is most proud of was a landmark 2000 article in the Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, in which he first presented the case for the potential of solar geoengineering to help mitigate the impacts of global climate change, a controversial study which prompted intense pushback from some environmental activists and academics who argued that the technologies would lessen the political pressure to address the root causes of climate change.

“This is a thing where people have extremely strong opinions, and I don't think that solar geoengineering necessarily makes sense as policy. I think it might well make sense to ban it. What I do think is that it deserves serious study and that we won't make better decisions about it by kind of maintaining a taboo where nobody talks or thinks about it,” he said.

Keith argued that his work on solar engineering has changed the thinking around how best to address climate change with a set of policies that combine mitigation with adaptation.

“Sensible climate policy is not one thing and a kind of monomania around emissions cuts doesn't make sense. Of course, we have to do emissions cuts. It's the single most important thing. If we don't do it, nothing else does it, but the idea that it's only emissions cuts, I think, is just now clearly wrong,” he said.

It may be that thinking about solar generation for some people should mean a permanent moratoria, and for other people, it should mean pathways towards deployment. I'm open minded about what the right answer is, but I think it is one of the big climate policy instruments, and we won't do sensible policy if you pretend it's not there.”

Keith’s interview is the sixth episode in the Environmental Insights series, and the second episode released in 2020.

“Environmental Insights is intended to inform and educate listeners about important issues relating to an economic perspective on developments in environmental policy, including the design and implementation of market-based approaches to environmental protection,” said Stavins. “We will speak with very accomplished Harvard colleagues, other academics, and practitioners who are working on solving some of the most challenging public problems we face.”

Environmental Insights is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

A full transcript of the interview is available here. 

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See also: 2020