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For two decades now, we\u2019ve failed to seriously address climate change. So the planet just keeps warming\u2014and it could get very bad. Picture major droughts, calving of gigantic ice sheets, increasingly dramatic sea level rise, and much more.

Against this backdrop, the idea of a technological fix to solve the problem\u2014like seeding the stratosphere with reflective sulfur particles, so as to reduce sunlight\u2014starts to sound pretty attractive. Interest in so-called \u201cgeoengineering\u201d is growing, and so is media attention to the idea. There are even conspiracy theorists who think a secret government plan to geoengineer the planet is already afoot.

Leading scientists, meanwhile, have begun to seriously study our geoengineering options\u2014not necessarily because they want to, but because they fear there may be no other choice.

This week's episode of Point of Inquiry with host Chris Mooney features Eli Kintisch, who has followed these scientists\u2019 endeavors\u2014and their ethical quandaries\u2014like perhaps no other journalist. He has broken stories about Bill Gates\u2019 funding of geoengineering research, DARPA\u2019s exploration of the idea, and recently attended the historic scientific meeting in Asilomar, California, where researchers gathered to discuss how to establish guidelines for geoengineering research.

And now, the full story is related in Kintisch\u2019s new book Hack the Planet: Science\u2019s Best Hope\u2014or Worst Nightmare\u2014for Averting Climate Catastrophe.

Eli Kintisch is a staff writer for Science magazine, and has also written for Slate, Discover, Technology Review, and The New Republic. He has worked as a Washington correspondent for the Forward and a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2005 he won the Space Journalism prize for a series of articles on private spaceflight. He lives in Washington, D.C.