Is Climate Stabilization still possible? - Metacrisis Salon #10
For decades, climate strategy has rested on two pillars: reduce emissions and adapt to impacts. Both remain essential.
But a growing body of science points to a challenge these strategies weren’t designed to fully address: warming is beginning to destabilize critical Earth systems — from glaciers and ocean currents to cloud dynamics and natural greenhouse gas stores — in ways that may generate risks of their own.
What if climate strategy needs a third pillar alongside mitigation and adaptation: climate stabilization — the research, monitoring, and responsible exploration of ways to understand and reduce Earth system destabilization risk?
In this session, we’ll explore a provocative but increasingly urgent question: How do we manage climate risk in a world where cutting emissions, while necessary, may no longer be sufficient on its own to preserve a safe and stable planet?
Drawing from frontier research on ice-sheet instability, declining planetary reflectivity, methane feedbacks, and other emerging risks, we’ll look at why some scientists and funders are beginning to frame climate not only as an emissions problem, but as a whole-system stability challenge — and what new tools, research agendas, and governance pathways that perspective opens up.
We’ll be joined by Kelly Erhart, Director at Outlier Projects, a climate philanthropy supporting frontier research to predict and prevent catastrophic Earth-system risks. Kelly works with researchers and field-builders exploring emerging pathways for climate stabilization, from glacier and sea-level risk to superpollutants and sunlight reflection research.
This is not a conversation about replacing decarbonization or indulging in techno-fixes. It’s about asking whether, in an era of climate overshoot, we need to broaden our toolkit — and what it would take to do so responsibly.
Not doom or silver bullets, but a serious conversation about how climate strategy may need to evolve — and what we can do to bring greater visibility to these risks and support efforts to reduce them in service of a safe and stable climate.
⚡️ Volunteer Early Arrival Starting at 4:00 PM, we’ll open the space for volunteers to help cook and set up. If you’d like to contribute to shaping the container — cooking, connecting, and preparing the room — we’d love to have you. Just send a message to let us know you’re coming early.
🗓 Evening Flow
First Half (CONTENT)
6:30 PM — Arrival & mingling
7:00 PM — Welcome & framing
7:10 PM — Kelly Erhart: Presentation + Q&A (50 min)
8:00 PM — [Second speaker TBD]
8:30 PM — 10-minute break
Second Half (COMMUNITY)
8:40 PM — Breakout group discussions (50 min)
9:30 PM — Group discussion (25 min)
10:00 PM — Community Announcements and Close.
Community-Made Vegan & gluten-free dinner, snacks and drinks will be provided!!