Albedo Accord: A practical path to cool the planet
Presentation to COP30 Virtual Forum, “The Global Heating Emergency: What’s the Plan?”
Albedo Accord: A practical path to cool the planet
Robert Tulip, COP30 Virtual Forum, “The Global Heating Emergency: What’s the Plan?”
November 12, 2025
To plant a tree, the best time was twenty years ago. The next best time is today. The same applies to the need to restore our planetary sunlight reflection. We should have begun to slow the darkening of the Earth many years ago.
Hello, my name is Robert Tulip, I am a member of the Steering Circle of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition and chair of the World Student Christian Federation for the Asia Pacific Region. Thank you, Dennis Garrity, and thanks to all who have brought this vital forum together to prevent two degrees of warming. It’s an honour to be part of this discussion. Pascal Lamy has made the vital case for a first-mover coalition led by the most climate-vulnerable states. Mike McCracken has set out the essential triad for a climate plan: Reduce Emissions, Remove Greenhouse Gases and Reflect Sunlight. I will explain the urgent need to establish an Albedo Accord as the most immediate practical way to cool the Earth.
Albedo is the measure of sunlight reflection from Earth to space. Satellite measurement shows albedo has fallen by 2% this century, due to loss of clouds, ice, snow and aerosols, what we can call the Earth’s Albedo Layer. The Earth is getting physically darker, and trapping more heat, in a primary accelerating warming feedback process.
The distinguished climate scientist Dr James Hansen calculated that darkening since 2015 has caused about four times more warming than new emissions. Warming from the darkening of the Earth is swamping any possible cooling effect from emission reduction. We need to gain international agreement to restore the albedo layer, as a vital contribution to planetary security and stability.
The abrupt decline of albedo is a major emerging planetary security crisis, driving extreme weather, sea level rise, biodiversity loss and systemic disruptions. An Albedo Accord is needed to enable urgent, coordinated international action to stabilise and restore planetary reflectivity. Alongside the Paris Accord on emissions, an Albedo Accord can form a twin pillar of climate security, fundamental to political, economic and military security and stability. A strategic pivot to deploy sunlight reflection technologies is needed to mitigate the catastrophic risks of warming. The precautionary principle demands action to protect and enhance albedo, to forestall warming processes that have catastrophic potential.
By slowing the speed of warming, the Albedo Accord will provide vital time for societies, ecosystems and species to adapt, directly addressing the collapse in biodiversity and protecting the ecological foundations of human well-being, and of all life on Earth, as well as the foundations of our world economy.
The Albedo Accord can govern and deliver measurable and acceptable interventions to restore planetary reflectivity without overburdening the political process. Key themes include shared responsibility, effective cooling and global thinking. Sunlight reflection is essential planetary infrastructure. Restoring albedo recognises our living planet as a single interconnected system, and promotes peaceful cooperation to sustain Earth systems.
Albedo shields us from harmful heat, with major benefits for the stability and health of our planetary environment, economy and society. These benefits justify the required investment in large scale research and deployment. Greenhouse gas removal is essential, but too small, slow, difficult and expensive to be a primary strategy to cool the planet in this decade. Sunlight reflection is the only climate lever that can act rapidly to slow extreme weather, biodiversity loss and tipping points. An Albedo Accord is the only way to prevent the planet reaching two degrees of warming, so we can step back from the dangerous hothouse precipice. The climate risks of not proceeding far outweigh any technology risks. There is extensive good research on the governance of solar geoengineering, but what is missing is an organised commitment and strategy for rapid deployment.
I argued in an article published in The Hill newspaper this year that slowing global warming requires an Albedo Accord modelled on the Montreal Protocol. Just as the Montreal Protocol has a narrow technical focus to govern the removal of ozone depleting substances, an Albedo Accord offers a focused mechanism to rebrighten and cool the planet.
We need to repair the Albedo Layer – clouds, ice, snow and aerosols – just as the Montreal Protocol has repaired the Ozone Layer.
The technical focus must also engage social, geopolitical and ethical concerns. We need climate results that are fast, safe, scientific, cheap, popular, effective, reliable and equitable. An Albedo Accord can cool the Earth with a small fraction of the funds the world now spends on disaster response and recovery, or on ineffectual climate strategies focused on energy reform.
Planetary cooling will be an industry for the twenty first century on the scale of aviation and pharmaceuticals in the twentieth century. A key challenge is to get support from industries who stand to benefit from the more benign and predictable climate created by higher albedo, such as insurance, banking, shipping, agriculture, tourism, defence, energy and others. An industrial lobby can support governments to create a first-mover caucus, targeting countries most vulnerable to warming impacts, and engaging civil society, especially religious organizations, as vital dialogue partners. Scientific communities in carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering should have a major role to support advocacy, program design and evaluation of proposals. Possible initial funding sources include philanthropic capital and the reinsurance industry. The next Climate Conference of the Parties should approve an Albedo Accord.
Key first tasks to establish an Albedo Accord include defining structure and objectives, explaining the benefits of sunlight reflection, lobbying for funding, and building a coalition of interested nations and stakeholders. The new organisation should coordinate scientific research and development to model and test proposed methods, leading to management of safe and effective deployment. It will need robust systems for monitoring, review and verification, and transparent and accountable international governance, in coordination with the valuable climate work others are doing on greenhouse gases. A technology-neutral approach can support cooling methods with the best safety, acceptance and efficacy, evaluated on criteria such as cost, speed, scalability, risk and measurable cooling benefit.
The Albedo Accord will enable climate policy to shift from carbon alone to an integrated approach to radiative forcing as the driver of warming. It will ensure climate measures are evaluated on cooling return on investment, recognising that albedo is a far more tractable and affordable climate lever than carbon removal, which cannot cool a darkening planet.
The evaporation of marine clouds is a largely unrecognised source of heating that cannot be slowed by decarbonising our economies. The worst moral hazard is to allow preventable heat to amplify human and ecological harm because we are too slow to test the methods that could prevent it. An Albedo Accord can enable well governed and effective cooling action, based on evidence, consent and accountability. We need a brighter planet, physically, emotionally and culturally, to provide hope for a stable and prosperous future together.
The Montreal Protocol worked because it was tightly scoped, rooted in science, and aligned with industry capability and public interest. An Albedo Accord can be similarly tight in scope and strong on science and equity from the start.
Partnership on an Albedo Accord between affected industries, vulnerable states, funding bodies, civil society and the scientific community can define practical strategies to slow and reverse dangerous warming as fast as possible. Thank you.