The 2025 J.U.C. Awards | #JUCAwards2025 | Dedication Theme #WaterActionDecade | Submitted Category: WRITING | Submission Code: W2 #JUC2025 | Word Count: 1299

Climate Engineering: Is It for the Better or the Worse?

[#JUCAwards2025] Have you ever thought about a system which would cool down the planet Earth if the weather was too hot for you to sleep in peace when you were little? To be honest, one of my dreams growing up was to have a remote controller that controls the weather. I thought about that whenever I couldn’t sleep at night because it was too hot, in my imagination I would turn on the freeze mode. Moreover; whenever it was too cold where I would shiver inside my blanket, I would open the hot mode. Thinking back to those times, I thought this concept could never be real, because how can you change something that has been programmed like this for decades. It feels absurd to or even undoable to control the climate, or even the temperature, right? Well, this concept is real now and it’s called climate engineering. Moreover; it may seem new to you but, we’ve been doing it unknowingly for decades now. Some people believe that it is the brand-new solution for climate change while others believe it is slowly killing the planet.

So, what exactly is climate engineering? Climate engineering is the intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system to counter climate change. In basic terms, this means that people change the Earth’s climate by doing activities which are capable of changing the climate. When you put climate engineering like this, you feel like they’re things normal citizens are not able to do. However, actually normal citizens are the ones who affect the climate most. For example, the most basic example of climate engineering can be using fossil fuels as our main source of energy. Right now, people are trying to lessen the usage of fossil fuels and increase the usage of renewable energy. However, the damage has already been done and now they try to reverse the effect with climate engineering. You may ask “What do they do to reverse fossil fuel effects?”. Well, this is the place where climate engineering enters. Let me give you some examples.

Let’s start with one of the more innocent ones. Since the 1970s, it is more and more common to paint the walls of houses in cool-toned or white colors. That might seem something basic to do, but painting your house white can drop the internal temperature of your house by 2 to 5 °C. Recently, scientists have been developing a paint that will reflect 90% of the light back to the atmosphere under the roof of climate engineering. It is said that covering just 1% of the Earth’s surface with the paint could be enough to offset the total effects of global warming.

Secondly, planting high albedo crops can also be considered as climate engineering. Albedo is the term used to describe the measure of how much sunlight is reflected by the plants’ surface. That indicates that high albedo crops have a higher reflectivity instead of absorption like other plants. This can be done by breeding plants that have the wanted results or they can be genetically modified. For example, to reflect light, the plants must have lighter-toned leaves. However, unfortunately, it only has a local and temporary effect.

The next one on our list is a bit more theoretical, and it is seen as it can’t be done in real life. This is called ocean mirrors. Basically, scientists once thought that they could put mirrors on the ocean so that they would be able to reflect light to the atmosphere again. It was firstly seen as it could increase the albedo of the ocean. Although; after further research, it was found that it could potentially kill all life underwater. Because of this and also because it is a costly thing to do, this was left as a theory.

On land, scientists have thought about artificial trees. Artificial trees are wanted to be used because they have the capacity to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than real forests. Furthermore, they can be put in industrial or urban areas where planting normal trees may not be possible. While a natural tree might take decades to absorb a few tons of carbon dioxide, artificial trees could potentially capture the same amount in a much shorter time. However, even though there are benefits, the energy usage of these trees is huge and moreover, there are still questions about the long-term usage of these trees. These trees still need a place to store all the carbon dioxide that was taken from the atmosphere, so it’s not an idea that can be applied easily.

Now we have the final boss, ocean fertilization. This term is a form of geoengineering that involves adding nutrients to the upper layers of the ocean to stimulate phytoplankton activity, photosynthesis, in an attempt to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. They put iron and nitrates into the surface waters of specific ocean regions to promote the growth of phytoplankton. Phytoplanktons are expected to die after blooming and take the carbon dioxide with them. The problem with this is that animals can eat the dead plants and the gas inside the plants can poison them. Also, fertilizing the ocean can make a gas called laughing gas (Nitrous oxide), which is a harmful greenhouse gas.

We’ve seen 5 different types of geoengineering until now. These were painting your walls, planting high albedo crops, ocean mirrors, artificial trees and ocean fertilization. Some of these are in progress right now, and some of them are in theory. I believe that they must be left in theory too while they’re like that. Yes, it does have its benefits, like for example the hot countries would be cooler but its negative ways are way too much to risk our planet like this.

First and foremost, doing geoengineering would make people forget about the negative parts of fossil fuels. That would make people use fossil fuels more and more without a stop. Secondly, it could cause wars because all the countries must come together to make something like this a reality. If only the strong countries wanted it and the other countries couldn’t give out their opinion, that would make the poor countries unite and have a war with the others. Thirdly, it doesn’t matter how much we do research on it, we still don’t and won’t understand the outcome of geo-engineering. It may mess up our planet and we may not be able to turn it back. Our planet has got through so much that it can’t carry any more messing with it.

In this essay, we have talked about the definition of geo-engineering, the types of geo-engineering, their pros and cons, and why we mustn’t rely on geo-engineering. Geo-engineering or in other words climate engineering is the type of activity that can change the world’s climate. These geo-engineering types are painting your walls, planting high albedo crops, ocean mirrors, artificial trees and ocean fertilization. Most of them are most likely to cause problems for the environment and the Earth if we make them a reality. That’s why it’s so controversial. In my opinion, geo-engineering is the last resort we should try. Before that, we must educate the society into good habits rather than make them forget about all the problems. Even though we start doing geo-engineering, usage of fossil fuels will always be left as an important issue we can’t seem to solve. To sum up, geo-engineering is a topic we must work more on but we can’t just start doing it and put our problems away under the carpet. They’re real issues and we must find sustainable solutions for them rather than start something we don’t know the capabilities of and how long we will need to continue it.

References

• vlogbrothers. (2023, October 4). A messy and unhinged introduction to geoengineering [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYYJZaTIMb0
• PBS Terra. (2023, October 31). Cool us or kill us? Did geoengineering ALREADY cause a massive famine? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeRcFe9VM5o
• RIFS Potsdam. (2014, January 22). Engineering the climate? [Video].
  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GKjl7afwaY
• The Economist. (2022, April 21). Climate change technology: is shading the earth too risky?[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFMMssyRsWo
• Santa Clara University. (n.d.). A brief introduction to climate engineering. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
  https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/resources/a-brief-introduction-to-climate-e ngineering/
• { “Deborah Gordon”}. (n.d.-b). Understanding climate engineering. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/08/understanding-climate-engineering ?lang=en
• What is Climate Engineering? (2017, November 6). Union of Concerned Scientists.
  https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/what-climate-engineering
• King, S. (2024, July 21). Could geo-engineering help save the planet?
  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98qp79gj4no
• Keller, D. P., Feng, E. Y., & Oschlies, A. (2014). Potential climate engineering effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario. Nature Communications, 5(1).
  https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4304
• Uk, H. M. W. (2023, July 5). White paint: a cool solution for climate change? Theweek.
  https://theweek.com/news/world-news/961518/how-can-white-paint-protect-buildings- from-heatwaves#
• What is ocean fertilization? (n.d.). https://web.whoi.edu/ocb-fert/what-is-ocean-fertilization/

The 2025 J.U.C. Awards | #JUCAwards2025 | Dedication Theme #WaterActionDecade | Submitted Category: WRITING | Submission Code: W2 #JUC2025 | Word Count: 1299 (references are excluded.)

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