Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the speed of the energy transition has accelerated.

The immense manufacturing capacity of China has started to churn

out solar panels at an extraordinary rate. But do we ever actually go through energy transitions at all?

Some people have argued that we just use more and more and more of all the energy sources all the time,

with each new technology inextricably bound up with what came before.

And while the energy transition, if that's what it is, has been picking up speed, so too

have the impacts of climate change.

For a long time, those of us in the UK have perhaps felt relatively

smugly isolated from all this. Yes, we've had catastrophic heat waves, but we don't have

hurricanes like America, and we haven't had a third of our country underwater like Pakistan

did in 2022. But there are worrying signs that the ocean systems that keep Britain's temperatures mild

are approaching a tipping point. New research suggests that Amok, the giant current of warm

water that stretches from the Caribbean and which keeps Northern Europe habitable, is on

the verge of collapse. So here we are, facing down the prospect of severe

climate change in the next few decades. And with that risk comes the prospect of geoengineering.

We could, say geoengineering supporters pretty effectively turned down the heat on our burning planet, and it wouldn't even

be that expensive. There are, however, catastrophic risks from geoengineering.

Done too close to the equator, or too intensely, it could disrupt the monsoon systems that feed

billions of the world's poorest people. Or done too close to the poles, it

could damage the fragile ozone layer. There is no easy answer, except of course, the rapid

decarbonization of the economy, and that doesn't seem like it's happening. So what should

we do about geoengineering? It's not an easy question to answer,

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