Political ideology and geoengineering: new paper

Why communicate about solar geoengineering?

While he was on stage at Arctic Repair 2025, Ramit Debnath (researcher at the Centre for Climate Repair) published a new paper on public attitudes towards solar geoengineering (SG). Through their surveys, the authors (led by Beatrice Magistro) found that more familiarity with geoengineering lessened the influence of political ideology.

As a result, they said, “increasing public awareness of SG could foster bipartisan engagement with climate policy, helping bridge the ideological divide.”

For Ramit, this raises the question, “How do we communicate about solar geoengineering? Is it science-based? Is it, in a way, reducing the uncertainty behind these technologies?”

“Our survey samples,” he says, “do show that more familiarity with solar geoengineering-based techniques and solar geoengineering actually improves the perception towards these technologies.”

Check out the new paper in PLOS Climate: Political ideology and views toward solar geoengineering in the United States | PLOS Climate