Spotlight: David Keith

David Keith is the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, housed at the Belfer Center. He has worked at the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for 20 years and has received numerous honors for his work, including the MIT prize for excellence in experimental physics and TIME magazine’s selection as one of its Heroes of the Environment.

Environmental hero. Techno-optimist. Madman. David Keith has been called many things, but “unoriginal thinker” isn’t one of them. Ever since he won acclaim for his dissertation experiment, which demonstrated that atoms travel as quantum waves, Keith has been shaking the establishment.

On any given day, you might find this scientist and policy analyst:

-Teaching at Harvard’s School of Engineering.

-Advising Bill Gates on climate issues.

-Helping his company, Carbon Engineering, scale up technology to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

-Writing academic papers about solar geoengineering in leading journals.

-Making the moral and policy case for greater R&D investment in solar geoengineering in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media.

-Giving speeches about environmental progress, and helping develop the “Ecomodernist Manifesto,” (ecomodernism.org) which is generating lots of press.

-Planning his next Arctic wilderness trip.

Keith says we’re at an environmental inflection point. Despite promising technology and social movements that will nudge smarter policies, public investment in focused energy R&D is “pitifully small” – less than we spend on nuclear weapons development. Given the importance of these efforts, Keith says, “that’s just goofy.”

Culture of “absurd caution”

Even more important than higher budgets, he says, is something counterintuitive: higher tolerance for failure. A major contributor of technological stagnation, he argues, is a “culture of absurd caution.” Scientific institutions like NASA and parts of DOE have become bureaucracies with minimal tolerance for failure. “If failure cannot be tolerated,” Keith says, “then you are certain to avoid success.”

This culture cannot be changed by blaming agencies. Government leaders need the courage to reframe fiascos like Solyndra as part of the discovery process. And Congress must prioritize a culture of competitiveness over “gotcha” hearings when things go wrong. Without such a shift, Keith says, America will lose the innovation race with China.

Keith is doing his part, working to build momentum for a once-taboo technology that could be one of our most effective tactics against climate change: solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management (SRM). In a nutshell, SRM injects aerosols into the stratosphere to block a portion of inbound sunlight, reversing the warming effect of carbon emissions.

SRM manages the symptoms of greenhouse gases only; it does not undo decades of damaging greenhouse gases, nor does it obviate the need for huge efforts to lower carbon emissions. Still, at a time when even the most aggressive global carbon treaties simply stop the problem from getting worse at a faster rate, Keith says this low-cost, high-impact technology represents one of the few tools we have to stop the planet’s dangerous warming.

Benefits and Risks

He is up-front about the risks of SRM, both to nature and national security, in which states could be drawn into conflict over earth’s thermostat. The need for greater clarity about both SRM’s promise and potential pitfalls, Keith says, are exactly why governments should support controlled experiments. Dispassionate analysis soon, he argues, will save us from desperate, ill-considered measures later. Meanwhile, Keith is leading a fundraising effort for Harvard’s own geoengineering initiative.

Keith is mindful that technological innovation alone won’t solve our climate problems. “There is absolutely no possibility of this issue getting solved by some kind of policy-free technology invention,” Keith says. “It’s all about policy.” Carbon, he explains, is basically a global public good. “We have to coordinate the provision of this public good. It’s a free-rider problem.”

To address this, policymakers must establish a carbon price. Despite major political barriers, Kieth says even conservatives who find “carbon taxes” a non-starter should embrace a competitive policy that would diminish today’s crony capitalism and lobbying-driven subsidies.

Just as the Belfer Center took the lead in confronting nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation, Keith hopes the Center will lead the effort to reduce the dangers of climate change. Stronger programs to help students gain mastery at the intersection of policy and science, he argues, are a must for the Kennedy School. “We need the convening power of the Kennedy School to bear on the cutting edge of science and technology.”