CAJ - A Ted Talk with David Keith

A Ted Talk with David Keith 

David Keith giving a speech at TED

In September 2007, David Keith payed a visit to TED and gave a brilliant insight into geoengineering. Mr. Keith is a Canadian environmental scientist and has been actively involved in searching for ways to cool our planet. He is the president of Carbon Engineering and he serves as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was listed as one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment 2009.

In his speech, he firstly presented some shocking facts about the current global warming stage. Throughout his speech he kept on saying that we hadn’t done anything to counter global warming. He continued by explaining that we could easily solve the problem. Wind power, nuclear power and CO2 capture are ways to counter global warming. These are techniques which are ready for large scale deployment. He also suggested the spraying of stratospheric sulphur aerosols. He then explained how photophoresis works and gave an idea of the cost. Using this method, we could make an ice planet with the cost of only 001% of GDP. What I like about his speech is that he looks at the technique of aerosols spraying in a critical way. He mentioned the side-effects such as the slight destruction of the ozone. He also raised the concern that if we know for sure that Geoengineering works, we will not be encouraged to cut emissions. In the end, he stated that there is still a lack of research and depth of knowledge in this study field. Scientists have to come up with more scenarios. Based on these scenarios, we could properly talk about the possible side effects of each geoengineering technique.