Viewpoint: Is geo-engineering the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ solution to uncontrollable climate change—or manufactured fear Ted Nordhaus | August 11, 2026

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/08/11/viewpoint-is-geo-engineering-the-break-glass-in-case-of-emergency-solution-to-uncontrollable-climate-change-or-manufactured-fear/ It’s easy to forget today, as more and more people have come to take the idea of solar geoengineering seriously, that the idea first really broke through into elite public consciousness as something of a troll. The notion had been discussed in a few arcane corners of the academy over previous decades. My uncle, William Nordhaus, even briefly mentioned it in his seminal 1975 paper on climate change. But the 2009 publication of SuperFreakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner, was the first time that discussion of the topic, to my knowledge, broke through to the mainstream. Levitt and Dubner argued that it would be far cheaper to simply hack the atmosphere with sulfur particles than to reorganize the global economy around non-fossil technology.