ALAMEDA, Calif, June 5, 2024 — The Center for International Environmental Law welcomed the Alameda City Council’s decision to say no to a highly contentious geoengineering experiment, echoing concerns from civil society organizations from across the world.
Alameda City Council members voted unanimously on June 4 against the go-ahead of a controversial experiment to test a highly speculative geoengineering technique in the Bay Area.
The University of Washington-led project aimed to test technology that would advance Marine Cloud Brightening — a form of solar radiation modification that involves spraying saltwater particles into the air to thicken or brighten clouds, theoretically increasing their reflectivity and partially blocking the sun’s rays.
Mary Church, Center for International Environmental Law Geoengineering Campaign Manager, said:
“We strongly welcome Alameda City Council’s unanimous decision to say no to the first open-air Marine Cloud Brightening experiment in the US. Key concerns raised by council members focused on lack of sufficient information, notice and transparency. The rejection rightfully reflects the gravity of what’s at stake for both local and global communities.
Geoengineering, by its very definition, involves manipulating earth systems at a regional or planetary level to have an impact on the global climate. While it could affect everyone on earth, its effects can neither be tested without large-scale deployment, nor controlled or undone once unleashed. We cannot geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis, what we need is to focus on real and proven solutions, starting with a phase out of all fossil fuels.”
Deploying Marine Cloud Brightening at scale would bring a host of new environmental and social impacts, potentially putting billions of peoples’ human rights at risk.
Deployed at scale, Marine Cloud Brightening would not reverse the climate crisis but create a different climate change potentially exacerbating droughts, hurricanes, and flooding far from the deployment site. It could also result in increased and uncontrollable salt deposition on land and in waterways, corroding infrastructure and harming agriculture, while the use of huge volumes of seawater would kill substantial marine life with cascading impacts on ocean food chains, fisheries, and coastal communities.
Benjamin Day, Friends of the Earth US Senior Campaigner for Climate & Energy Justice, said:
The Alameda City Council made a wise decision to not give into the geoengineering hype and stop the first open-air Marine Cloud Brightening project in the United States. The risks of geoengineering to the planet are too high, and there is no safe and humane scientific pathway forward to test technology like this. We will not be able to ‘engineer’ our way out of this climate crisis, and once we move on from false solutions like geoengineering, the more efficiently we can reduce emissions and act as the stewards our planet needs.”
Note to Editors
The Center for International Environmental Law is a member of the Hands Off Mother Earth! Alliance — an international civil society network of nearly 200 organizations from more than 45 different countries — which has raised concerns about the Marine Cloud Brightening experiment with Alameda City Council members. In a statement issued on May 29, 2024, more than 70 groups called on governments to prevent outdoor marine geoengineering experiments from taking place, to avoid the legitimization of this dangerous distraction to real climate action, and avoid the slippery slope to deployment.
Media contact
Lindsey Jurca, Communications Specialist: press@ciel.org