Senior Canadian Government Meeting Looked at Geoengineering

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that a "secret" Canadian government meeting on worst-case climate scenarios took place last summer, and examined geoengineering as one potential response.  The meeting was convened by the former deputy minister of Environment Canada, Paul Boothe, and was closed to the public.  It is unclear who attended the meeting, but invitees included representatives from the Department of National Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Natural Resources Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper's national security advisor declined to attend.

The newspaper obtained a presentation made by Environment Canada under Canada's freedom of information law.  In its presentation, the department stated that, "To avoid surpassing it [the 2 C warming target], global CO2 emissions must level off immediately, and decline to negative values before end of century (implying net CO2 extraction from atmosphere), or other means of moderating warming would be needed."  More specific details of the discussions on geoengineering are unavailable.  The inclusion of geoengineering on the meeting agenda was apparently spurred by a March 2012 email exchange between Boothe and Harvard professor David Keith.  It should be noted that this meeting occurred prior to last fall's disclosures regarding rogue OIF experiments off the coast of Haida Gwaii.