David Keith Presents Solar Geoengineering Lectures

2013 | “You could actually spray sulfuric acid in the stratosphere” – David Keith

Link To_2013_David Keith_Colbert_Geoengineering using jets to spray_Sulfuric Acid_

August 7, 2013 Geoengineering Debate MIT

Speakers: Oliver Morton, Alan Robock, Daniel Schrag, David Keith, and Stephen Gardiner

“This is a really important moral point. So if I made a decision or if there was a collective decision to do a geoengineering program, and you put say, the kind of program I think that makes more sense is what about a million tons a year, let’s say, you might end up killing many tens of thousands of people a year as a direct result of that decision.

I think that has moral consequences, I don’t sweep that under the rug. This is a case where I take this much differently from Alan and think it’s a much more serious issue. Now, it’s true that part of doing that, you would hope that the overall benefits of human mortality would be so that you would save many many more people than that. But the fact that you uh, would save more people than you kill, doesn’t mean there’s no moral impact (laughs) of making a decision that directly kills people. And I think that we who talk about this have a duty to be clear-eyed about the direct risks involved in doing it.” -David Keith @ 1:10:15