Termination Shock By Neal Stephenson

[Robert Tulip]

A political thriller, a love story, climate havoc, postmodern technology, royalty, social media, and above all, a superb introduction to the vexed existential question of the need for solar geoengineering to address climate change, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson is a brilliant science fiction novel that deserves wide readership as a basis for conversation about the risks and benefits of action to brighten the planet. The science is well presented among dramatic incidents, vivid characters, amazing ideas and a rollicking multi-faceted global story line that careers from Texas to Holland, Venice, Arabia, India, Canada and New Guinea. I particularly liked the Queen of Holland and the Canadian Sikh who becomes a hero on the Line of Actual Control.

That all provides a vehicle for some very serious political messages. The big policy question raised is the need for governments to test and deploy new cooling technologies. The problem is that simple scientific observation has led to expert recognition that action to brighten the planet is needed, and to views that such action would be of high benefit to global peace and prosperity and stability, but the inability of governments, academia and media to acknowledge this situation creates the opening for private actors who fail to seek broad consensus on the need for a paradigm shift in climate policy. As a result, unilateral deployment creates tension and conflict, great for a novel but not so good for the real world.

The Texas billionaire who builds a stratospheric sulphur gun in Termination Shock takes a cowboy approach that is not a feasible way to introduce cooling technology. And yet this scenario, which I suspect may have inspired the real climate cowboy actions of Making Sunsets, offers the opportunity to ask if there is a better way to approach these problems.

The failure of the IPCC to engage on albedo enhancement is a scientific and political scandal, continued in its latest AR6 Synthesis Report. Termination Shock provides a clear-eyed depiction of a plausible situation that could arise from this negligent complacency. It contains remarkably astute and informed discussion of the complex political and social and scientific concerns raised by the need for new global thinking on climate. In one powerful dialogue, we learn that a cube of sulphur you could hold in your hand would neutralise the warming of a railway box car full of coal. In the background and often foreground we hear the insistent drumbeat of sea level rise and its economic calamity. The geopolitical risks of a termination shock from abrupt cessation of badly governed geoengineering provide the underlying theme of the novel, suggesting the moral lesson that governments should urgently consider the strategic security implications.

Climate change needs a new Bretton Woods Conference, establishing international institutions to cool the planet. Rather than the sudden secret surprise of risky deployments, broad and open political and scientific discussions of albedo enhancement can bring the public along, explaining the need for a change of path. Carbon based methods are simply too small and slow to stop tipping points. We need a brighter planet – smarter policy can provide more hope for the future by shining more sunlight back to space. That practical response to global warming is entirely within the capacity of humanity to achieve, and quickly.

Neal Stephenson discussed Termination Shock at https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/14/neal-st ... erse-.html.

Robert Tulip
22 March 2023