Environment Canada proposes to spend taxpayer dollars on “climate-altering” technologies that alter the earth’s atmosphere and block the sun.This comes on the heels of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s declaration that Canada doesn’t need any more roads built. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) recently released its five-year plan, Science Strategy 2024 to 2029, with objectives “to better reflect the current context” as pertains to Canada's specific environment and to better respond to “urgent environmental challenges” through “climate engineering.”“It identifies forward-looking directions for our science,” Environment Canada wrote. “These reflect and emphasize the horizontal nature of the Department’s work and the efforts needed for continuous improvement.”“This renewed Science Strategy is an important statement of support for the scientific integrity, rigour and innovative spirit of our people who, collectively, drive ECCC’s science agenda forward.”The updated Science Strategy “brings us to the next level, with an ambitious agenda for departmental science that keeps pace with the rapidly changing environmental context.”With the Trudeau Liberals’ goal of achieving net-zero by 2035 in mind, this “ambitious agenda” entails investigating techniques that intervene with the natural climate system. Environment Canada wants to “improve the understanding of climate-altering technologies in the Canadian context.”The government’s objective is to “understand the potential for climate engineering and determine the implications of technologies that aim to deliberately alter the climate system, typically to counteract climate warming (e.g., solar radiation modification, marine geoengineering, carbon dioxide removal techniques),” and plans to “conduct scientific assessments of climate-altering technologies and impacts on Canada.”According to the UN Environment Programme, solar radiation modification is a “technology designed to cool the planet.”Its chief method is stratospheric aerosol injection, which “involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, so a small amount of sunlight is deliberately reflected into space to cool the planet.”Further methods involve cloud seeding, which is a weather modification technique that “improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of subfreezing clouds,” according to Desert Research Institute, and marine cloud brightening, which is the “seeding of low marine clouds” to “enhance their albedo (the fraction of sunlight that is diffusely reflected by a body), thus reflecting more solar radiation back to space,” according to Science Direct. Critics warn interventions such as stratospheric aerosol injections could lead to unexpected consequences, such as making climate change worse, damaging the ozone layer, and causing health problems for people. “Depending on the materials it uses, it could damage the ozone layer. This can cause health and environmental problems,” warns the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative. “Stopping it suddenly could cause rapid temperature rise that would be disruptive to human society and be dangerous for many species.”
