Evaluating a Manhattan Project for climate change

Abstract

Rapid global warming driven by human activity is altering the Earth’s ecosystems, and it is imperative for humanity to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing the challenges of climate change is a race against time, and while countries around the world have pledged to cut their emissions, progress is slow and the pledges are far from being achieved. The U.S. has faced challenges before that required a large investment of resources, financial and human, to achieve goals in a short time frame. The Manhattan Project is the largest of such projects and it operated with unlimited funds under a centrally controlled bureaucracy. We apply the framework of the Manhattan Project to the threat of climate change and consider its effectiveness in combating the challenges posed by climate change. We also analyze recent U.S. climate policy to compare and contrast it with a hypothetical Manhattan Project for climate. We find that the Manhattan Project approach, while effective at delivering technological advancements and working in secrecy, falls short at dealing with problems that require transparency and collaboration and that cannot be solved by ‘silver-bullet’ technologies.