PLEA Network

13 February 2019, CIEL – Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis. A new report released today by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and Heinrich Boell Foundation exposes how a growing belief that geoengineering is needed to address climate change could actually undermine climate goals while locking in fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come. The report, Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis highlights how the urgency and scale of the climate crisis are being exploited to push ideas like carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM)—once relegated to the fringes of the climate debate—into the mainstream. It examines the fossil fuel industry’s long history and continued role in the development and promotion of key geoengineering concepts and technologies, and it exposes the numerous ways these technologies serve to protect the industry and promote new emissions from fossil fuels….“Our research shows that nearly all proposed geoengineering strategies fail a fundamental test: do they reduce emissions and help end our reliance on fossil fuels?” says co-author and CIEL President Carroll Muffett. “Proponents of CCS and its geoengineering progeny ask the world to assume that we can burn more coal, produce more oil, and still keep the world below 1.5 degrees. But we cannot meet the demands of the climate crisis by locking in new fossil infrastructure for decades or centuries.” Read more here