Shutterstock/John D. Sirlin
Combating climate change is an inherently collectivist cause. We only have one planetwith one atmosphere, and whenever anyone in the world emits greenhouse gaseswe all feel the consequences.
But some people have undue influence. Globally, the richest 1 percent of people have accounted for a fifth of all emissions since 1990. If the richest people and countries voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint, the whole world will benefit.
Of course, anyone with any understanding of reality knows that won't happen. But what if the richest instead tried to correct their carbon imbalance by funding geoengineering efforts to re-cool the planet? Here the promise of global benefit is less certain. As we report in our exclusive survey of climate scientists (see Exclusive: Climatologists expect attempts to darken the sun by 2100), the overwhelming risk of such efforts is that they could lead to unknown consequences, from drought to damage to the ozone layer.
For this reason, if we want to influence the planet's atmosphere in this way – and we may eventually have to – it must only be done in a collectivist way. And yet, there is currently nothing stopping any individual or group from taking unilateral action to try to cool the planet. For this reason, more than 80 percent of the researchers we surveyed say the world should agree on an international treaty governing the potential deployment.
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Globally, the richest 1 percent of people account for a fifth of all emissions.
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Such a treaty would be one of many updates to global governance we need in the modern era. Another arena where billionaires can impose their actions on the rest of us is the night sky, which is increasingly home to atmospherically damaging satellites (see below). How concerned should we be about harmful chemicals released from dead satellites?). With no global restrictions on launches, the number has grown by thousands in recent years, largely thanks to Elon Musk's Starlink program.
International agreements are not flashy or straight out of the pages of science fiction, making it much more difficult for them to attract the support of billionaires. But if the richest want to give something back, supporting international law would be a good start.
