CFR Report calls for Urgency in Solar Geoengineering Research and Preparations

A special report from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) calls on the U.S. to take major, urgent measures to increase research on solar geoengineering and sunlight reflection as a part of the answer to global warming.

Prepared by Stewart Patrick and released at the end of April 2022, the CFR report evaluates the existing approaches of emissions reductions and carbon removal. It finds them insufficient for preventing enormous warming risks, and likely to remain greatly insufficient for scientific and practical reasons that would be objectively very difficult to overcome. It concludes that sunlight reflection will probably be an indispensable component in preventing dangerous levels of global warming, and that research and preparations for this need to be greatly accelerated.

Awareness is growing of the need to proceed on this. In 2021 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a similar report, recommending to the U.S. government to invest in upgrading solar geoengineering research.

The CFR report recommends both greatly accelerated research and testing, and diplomatic and international governance preparations for carrying out sunlight reflection with global support and coordination. 

"This Council Special Report builds a compelling case... It is sad that such a report is necessary, but it will be even sadder still if we do not make exploring the potential of sunlight reflection an urgent priority.”

             -- CFR President Richard Haass

 “Sunlight reflection … could—in light of current warming trends and risk projections—make what is likely to be a lengthy transition to a decarbonized world tolerable. It is incumbent on countries to assess the feasibility and wisdom of pursuing this option and the institutions required to govern its potential deployment…. Given the stakes, the U.S. government is, at present, severely underinvesting in areas of science relevant to sunlight reflection.… It would be vastly preferable for the world to make progress on the science of sunlight reflection and to discuss its national and international governance openly today, so that policymakers are prepared to make informed decisions on its potential deployment tomorrow, rather than being forced to act out of ignorance on the fly when all other options have failed.”

                 -- “Reflecting Sunlight to Reduce Climate Risk: Priorities for Research and International Cooperation”, Council Special Report No. 93, April 2022. https://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/Patrick-CSR93-web.pdf

 

For the Center for War/Peace Studies (CWPS) initiative to upgrade work and awareness on sunlight reflection, see https://www.warpeacestudies.org/about-3

 

 

Zelensky calls for emergency global union to provide real security, a veto-free UN

 Zelensky called today for an emergency global union to provide real security, by abolishing the veto in the UN Security Council. 

What he is calling for is the central purpose of CW/PS. We are doing all we can to support his call for action here and now, in time to save the UN's purpose and Ukraine with it.

Here is his address to the Security Council:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?519301-1/ukraine-president-addresses-un-security-council&live&vod

        Help us and help Ukraine. Support our Ukraine-and-UN emergency reinforcement campaign. Join us. Write about it. Send a donation using our website, www.warpeacestudies.org/

 

A Berlin Airlift for Ukraine

Ira Straus

Chair of the Center for War/Peace Studies

Former Fulbright professor of international relations in Moscow

 

Putin is fast pushing in Ukraine to the level of genocidal killings that he sponsored in Syria a decade ago. He is imposing a neo-totalitarianism on Russia at the same time.

We need to rescue the civilians of Ukraine with a Berlin-style airlift.

The airlift could be under UN auspices. Russia would be given full notice. It almost certainly would not shoot UN planes down.

But if it did shoot some down, it would provide cause for the UN to suspend Russia from the global organization. And that would have severe consequences for Russia. The Security Council could start passing binding resolutions that all countries would be obligated to carry out against Russia. Or a resolution authorizing armed escorts to protect the airlift planes and get them through to the starving people.

 

What to airlift? Food, fresh water and filters, and fuel.

Where to airlift to? Mariupol, urgently. Kharkiv and Kiev, next, also urgently. Odesa and other besieged cities, third.

 

Putin has dumped his most vicious bombing on the ethnically Russian cities that he supposed would love him most, Mariupol and Kharkiv. Like a primitive false god, he would rather destroy his people than let them live without him.

There are thousands dead already. The numbers are growing geometrically. 20,000 deaths are estimated in Mariupol alone to date, 4000 of them carefully recorded.

Putin's troops bombed a great city’s food warehouses three times in a single day. These were repeated, pinpoint strikes, not accidents. It is not just siege warfare. It is starvation warfare.

Mass starvation is setting in.

This is the moment to prove we mean it when we say “never again”.

 

UKRAINE: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY RECKONING

by Galen D. Kirkland
Executive Director for War-Peace Studies

All citizens of the world confront the same nagging questions today. Is humankind doomed to experience another paroxysm of human slaughter because of delusional designs for domination and control in the minds of a cadre of misguided people? Will the unpredictable dogs of war be loosed upon millions of people to inflict unspeakable suffering? Is the vast majority of peace-loving people unavoidably paralyzed in the role of passive observer as the nightmare unfolds? The truth that illuminates us all is that we always have the power to fight for peace. We can raise our voices and sacrifice our material comfort to support the global resistance to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

After World War II, there was a surge of international support for a world federation of nations in hopes that the obscenities of widespread war would never be repeated. The tangible result of this movement was the establishment of the United Nations with grand expectations. Pioneers like Lucy Webster, Richard Hudson, Hamilton Kean, and Myron Kronisch at the Center for War/Peace Studies developed proposals for a more effective United Nations through a more powerful federation of nations. They met with embassy and consular staff of many nations to advocate the adoption of the Binding Triad for a more rational voting system in the United Nations General Assembly, and they advocated for a reformed United Nations Security Council where more global representation could be achieved without vetoes by the big-five victors of World War II. 

These and other supporters of world federation around the globe dedicated many years of tireless work to the mission of creating a stronger global community that could better defend itself from dictators and rogue regimes. The present challenge of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a reckoning of whether humankind has developed the capacity to prevent a repeat of the violent tragedies of the past. Have we evolved sufficiently to use reason and diplomacy in place of unbridled violence? The answer to this pivotal test of the twenty-first century hinges on the consciousness and the courage of all citizens of the world. Are we prepared to do everything possible to succeed in rejecting violence by means of overwhelming sanctions? This will require isolating the Russian regime from the rest of the world effectively enough to make victories in battle self-defeating. Working together, we have the power to defend peace by creating an effective deterrence to violence.