This presentation sets out reasons that climate engineering (CE) (especially solar radiation management by stratospheric aerosol injection) cannot be ‘governed’ in a conventional sense. Although some reasons are more generally applicable to new technologies, I argue that CE presents a particularly extreme case. Following Nigel Clark, It implies a wider new geologic politics for which our existing political institutions and ways of thinking are not well prepared. CE would bring not just ‘no-analogue climates’ but also a ‘no-analogue society’, one with a new articulation of the dynamic Earth and how we relate to its various strata. In such a society, CE is likely to take on new meanings, be put to new uses, and be judged in new ways – changes of meaning which are likely to overwhelm any logic of governance over time. I conclude by suggesting other ways we might think about the politics of shaping planetary processes.
