UNO Magazine: Global Climate Alteration Security and Sustainability

From the Spring 2023 UNO Magazine

Geoengineering – or manipulating climate through technology – sounds like a term pulled from science fiction.

The ability for humans to release materials into the air to reflect sunlight to cool down the planet or remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses seems like a far-off concept. But as events such as severe flooding, wildfires and extreme cold continue to impact billions of lives, nations could soon look to more drastic measures to curb the impacts of climate change without considering their national security consequences.

Beth Chalecki, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and director of UNO’s sustainability minor, is quickly emerging as a global leader in understanding geoengineering’s national security implications. In the past two years, she has spoken at multiple NATO symposiums, held a prestigious fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and held a Fulbright Research Chair in U.S.-Canada Relations in Ottawa, Canada.

Chalecki’s goal is to promote an understanding of how viewing environmental issues as national security issues can lead to a safer future and avoid a world where climate-driven migration and conflicts over natural resources become a reality.

An Interview with Chalecki

Chalecki sat down with UNO Magazine to discuss the importance of the work and the importance of UNO being at the forefront. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Are international discussions taking place about geoengineering and security issues?

Beth Chalecki: I don’t think many of the geoengineers really have a hold of what the consequences are. They all know there are significant problems that could come with this, but they’ve modeled mostly ecological issues.

The effect on international relations and security hasn’t been considered yet, and that’s what I’m doing. When I’m working with NATO as a subject matter expert, they are very interested in hearing about geoengineering because now you have a technology by which one state can materially change the living conditions in another state without that state’s permission.

One example of this technology is a nation deploying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect incoming sunlight back into space, meaning less sunlight hits the Earth’s surface, and cooling the temperature. What if this also impacts the climate in neighboring countries? How can we ensure it doesn’t?

BC: If I’m in India, for example, and I’m trying to cool my part of the world by sending this out and someone in Peru’s harvest fails. Determining whose actions caused which effects is going to be a big area for future study in geoengineering. None of this is currently illegal under international law.

I’m trying to consider how we govern this technology, given the limitations of sovereignty that we’ve built into the international system.

How could geoengineering impact areas of the world where tensions are already high?

BC: You could have some counter-geoengineering. For example, if China finds out that India was going to do this, they could take measures to prevent it from happening.

What are the possible consequences of nations using geoengineering as a solution without addressing underlying issues such as the emission of greenhouse gasses?

BC: Say we move ahead with geoengineering and sulfur aerosol injections, and it works, and all the politicians say we’ve helped solve a few problems and now we don’t have to change anything. The worst-case scenario is we go full ahead with business-as-usual fossil fuel use, but then something goes wrong with the sulfur aerosol injections. That would be the worst outcome because you would have temperature spikes, ecological die-offs and massive amounts of refugees.

How do we avoid a scenario like that?

BC: From an international relations perspective, we need to modify our version of the international system to take the environment into account.

Issues like this require scores of people to solve them. What are some career paths UNO students can take to solve some of these global challenges in sustainability, geoengineering or climate change?

BC: If you want to go into law, we’re going to need environmental lawyers. If you want to work for a federal agency like the FBI or the CIA, you need to know about these topics because you could have some environmental intelligence cross your desk. Any career that you want can have a sustainability angle to it.