As countries seek a shared understanding of how to implement the Paris Agreement, they have to navigate the tensions that arise from combining bottom-up “nationally determined contributions” to carbon emission reductions with top-down global temperature targets. This project examines these tensions, asking how different framings of the problems that climate change poses emerge together with specific institutional settlements for their resolution. As solar geoengineering enters the picture, what institutional settlements are being proposed in its name, and how does this reinforce or challenge dominant understandings of how the global climate should be governed?