“Our house is burning and we continue to look elsewhere,” Jacques Chirac was moved in 2002. In twenty years, the world has evolved and few people deny climate change. However, this is not enough, on the contrary. The IPCC reports follow one another and are summarized in an ever more distressing way: the planet is going straight into the wall. And not only is she going there, but faster and faster. This wall has a name: the Paris agreements of 1995 which aim to limit warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period. Today, we know that we will not achieve this with the current state of our carbon dioxide emissions.
Countries around the world must do “much more, now, on all fronts”, underlines a recent UN report ahead of COP28 which opens on November 30 in the United Arab Emirates. There is therefore an urgent need to use all possible means to change the situation. Geoengineering is one of them. Long demonized under the pretext of justifying inaction, here it comes back in a new light. Most scientists do not encourage it, insisting on the obligation to continue to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions, but some admit that we can no longer afford the luxury of not considering it, or at least of explore certain avenues. On condition that they are reversible and that they develop within an international framework.