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In this week’s programme, ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, Adam Walton explores some of the more radical ideas which are being put forward to prevent global warming – from artificial ‘forests’ capturing carbon dioxide to the creation of stratospheric veils against the sun. Welcome to the world of geoengineering.

The UK Met Office has announced that in 2015, for the first time, the global average temperature is set to rise more than one degree Celsius above its pre-industrial levels. That’s half way towards the two degrees threshold which is widely acknowledged as the point of no return for dangerous global warming.

Keeping temperatures below that critical threshold is the aim of the UN Climate Change Conference which starts at the end of November 2015 in Paris. World leaders will gather in what’s been described as the last chance to avert climate change.  The Conference will be focussing on reducing emissions but many scientists believe that we really need to start considering more radical options.

Adam and guests consider the ways in which we might directly influence our climate – by injecting particles into the stratosphere to create a veil against the sun or by using artificial trees to soak up carbon, which is then buried. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction but scientists are seriously assessing the feasibility – and the dangers – of geoengineering.

Joining Adam to discuss the advantages and risks of geoengineering are Oliver Morton, an editor at The Economist and author of the book The Planet Remade – How Geo-engineering could change the World; Prof. Richard Darton, Co-Director of Oxford University’s Geoengineering Programme; Prof. Nick Pidgeon, Director of the Understanding Risk Research Group at Cardiff University; and Dr. Christian Dunn from the Wolfson Carbon Capture Laboratories at Bangor University.