In his speech at the Munich Security Conference, George Soros supported the idea of using experimental geosolar technologies to protect the Arctic from melting.
The melting of the Greenland ice sheet "poses a threat to the survival of our civilization," he said on Thursday. Soros stressed that the current efforts to contain rising temperatures are failing, and the planet is increasingly at risk of reaching a tipping point.
Human activity has already resulted in an average rise in global temperatures of about 1.2°C. At current emission levels, the planet is on track to warm by about double the 1.5 degree Celsius limit set by nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Soros has backed geosolar engineering as one way to deal with the climate crisis, an idea pioneered by scientists such as former UK chief scientific adviser David King. This concept is often seen as a last resort in the fight against global warming because it involves physically changing the Earth's atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back into space or increase the amount of solar radiation that can escape.
In his presentation, which included a short film, George Soros said that King's proposal would create white clouds to duplicate the reflectivity of Arctic ice—known as the "albedo effect." Emphasizing the need to refocus international financial institutions, especially the World Bank, to ensure that sufficient resources are available to combat climate change.
The warning came after World Bank President David Malpass announced plans to step down by mid-year, giving the Biden administration an opportunity to pick someone to realign the global development lender to focus more on fighting global warming.
Soros said that inaction could send humanity down a path in which the amount of money needed to restabilize or restore the climate system would grow exponentially. He added that civilization would be completely destroyed due to rising temperatures.
