Targeted geoengineering as an ethical response to climate risk

IPCC targets 1.5C or 2C global temperature rises relative to pre-industrial as the rises required to prevent significant damage. Politicians have paid lip-service to these with international commitments such as the Paris Accord, but the fact remains that these commitments are not sufficient to meet these targets. Indeed, it is almost impossible to do so. Cooling the earth by stratospheric aerosol injection geoengineering has been proposed as a possible way of avoiding crossing the IPCC 2C threshold. But there are numerous issues related to ethics, equity, and economics when dealing with global control of climate that make such deployment extremely difficult. An alternative would be to tackle the impacts of climate change piecemeal. To that end solutions to cryosphere risks have been proposed (to preserve sea ice, permafrost and ice sheets), and these are very much easier to deal with ethically and from governance perspectives. Furthermore, they are providing much needed hope and opportunities to buy-in to the issue for young people. The opportunities to move the discussion forward by emphasizing the moral opportunities to help the South, unborn generations and other species can be readily grasped by these kinds of interventions.