President Donald Trump’s former international energy adviser has a new, counterintuitive pitch to sell Republicans on one set of technologies to reduce global warming: They could help keep the world hooked on oil, gas and coal, at least for a while.
“If I were in this current White House, I’d say, ‘Well, we should support SRM because it’s a good insurance policy for continued fossil fuel use,'” said George David Banks, referring to solar radiation management, a largely theoretical response to global warming that involves spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere.
Banks served in the first Trump administration and is now the CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation, a business advocacy group.
His comments were made during a panel discussion Tuesday at a conference in Chicago organized by the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, and come as some environmentalists and investors have begun embracing sunlight reflection tech, which is also known as solar geoengineering.
