So if we don’t want to perpetuate poverty in the name of preventing climate change, geoengineering may be our way out. Why? Because geoengineering would provide more time for the world’s economy to grow while inventors and entrepreneurs develop and deploy new carbon neutral energy sources to replace fossil fuels … It seems unlikely that fast-growing poor countries like India and China will agree cut back on their use of fossil fuels any time soon. If that’s the case, then emissions reductions in rich countries would have almost no effect on future temperature trends. Geoengineering could give humanity more time to resolve this collective action problem, too.