Arguments and architectures: Discursive and institutional structures shaping global climate engineering governance

AbstractThe prospect of climate engineering (CE) – also known as geoengineering, referring to modification of the global environment to partly offset climate change and impacts from elevated atmospheric greenhouse gases – poses major, disruptive challenges to international policy and governance. If full global cooperation to manage climate change is not initially achievable, adding CE to the agenda has major effects on the challenges and risks associated with alternative configurations of participation – for example, variants of partial cooperation, unilateral action, and exclusion. Although the risks of unilateral CE by small states or non-state actors have been over-stated, some powerful states may be able to pursue CE unilaterally, risking international destabilization and conflict. These risks are not limited to future CE deployment, but may also be triggered by unilateral research and development (R&D), secrecy about intentions and capabilities, or assertion of legal rights of unilateral action. They may be reduced by early cooperative steps, such as international collaboration in R&D and open sharing of information. CE presents novel opportunities for explicit bargaining linkages within a complete climate response. Four CE-mitigation linkage scenarios suggest how CE may enhance mitigation incentives, and not weaken them as commonly assumed. Such synergy appears to be challenging if CE is treated only as a contingent response to a future climate crisis, but may be more achievable if CE is used earlier and at lower intensity, either to reduce peak near-term climate disruption in parallel with a programme of deep emission cuts or to target regional climate processes linked to acute global risks.

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Climate Engineering

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.815 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Konrad Ott ◽

Frederike Neuber

Keyword(s):

Solar Radiation ◽

Large Scale ◽

Global Climate ◽

Solar Radiation Management ◽

Climate Engineering ◽

Ethical Perspective ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Carbon Cycles ◽

Radiation Management ◽

Investment Portfolios

The means to combat dangerous anthropogenic climate change constitutes a portfolio. Beside abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, this portfolio entails adaptation to changing climate conditions, and so-called climate engineering measures. The overall portfolio has to be judged on technical, economic, and moral grounds. This requires an in-depth understanding of the moral aspects of climate engineering options. Climate engineering (CE) is a large-scale intentional intervention either in carbon cycles (carbon dioxide removal; CDR) or in solar radiation (solar radiation management; SRM). The ethical discourse on climate engineering has gained momentum since the 2010s. The set of arguments pro and contra specific CE technologies constitute a vast landscape of discourse. Single arguments must be analyzed with scrutiny according to their ethical background, their normative premises, their inferential logic, and their practical and political consequences. CE ethics, then, has a threefold task: (a) it must suppose a solid understanding of different CE technologies and their risks; (b) it has to analyze the moral arguments that speak in favor or against specific CE technologies; and (c) it has to assess the impacts of accepting or rejecting specific arguments for the overall climate portfolio’s design. The global climate portfolio differs from ordinary investment portfolios since stakes are huge, moral values in dispute, risks and uncertainties pervasive, and collective decision-making urgent. Any argument has implications of how to design the overall portfolio best. From an ethical perspective, however, one must reflect upon the premises and inferential structures of the arguments as such. Analysis of arguments and mapping them logically can be seen as core business of CE ethics. Highly general arguments about CE usually fall short, since the diverse features of individual technologies may not be addressed by overarching arguments that necessarily homogenize different technologies. It can be stated with confidence that the moral profiles of CDR and SRM are highly different. Every single deployment scheme ought to be judged specifically, for it is a huge difference to propose SRM as a substitute for abatement, or to embed it within a comprehensive climate portfolio including abatement and adaptation, where SRM will be used sporadically and only for a matter of decades.

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Carbon Emissions, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, and Unintended Harms

Ethics & International Affairs ◽

10.1017/s0892679417000466 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 479-493 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Christopher J. Preston

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Carbon Emissions ◽

Global Climate ◽

Double Effect ◽

Stratospheric Aerosol ◽

Doctrine Of Double Effect ◽

Climate Engineering ◽

Moral Importance ◽

First Time ◽

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection

AbstractIn the rapidly expanding literature on the ethics of climate engineering, a lot has been made of the fact that stratospheric aerosol injection would for the first time create a world whose climate had been intentionally shaped by deliberate human decisions. Intention has always mattered in ethics. Due to the importance of intention in assigning culpability for harms, one might expect that the moral responsibility for any harms created during an attempt to reconstruct the global climate using stratospheric aerosols would be considerable. This article investigates such an expectation by making a comparison between the culpability for any unintended harms resulting from stratospheric aerosol injection and culpability for the unintended harms already taking place due to carbon emissions. To make this comparison, both types of unintended harms are viewed through the lens of the doctrine of double effect. The conclusion reached goes against what many might expect. The article closes by suggesting that a good way to read this surprising conclusion is that it points toward the continuing moral importance of prioritizing emission reductions.

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Organising the unthinkable in times of crises: Will climate engineering become the weapon of last resort in the Anthropocene?

Organization ◽

10.1177/1350508418759186 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 472-490 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Markus Lederer ◽

Judith Kreuter

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Early Development ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Global Climate ◽

The Other ◽

Climate Engineering ◽

Technical Feasibility ◽

Development Stages

In this article, we ask how the approaches of climate engineering – mostly highly technological approaches to address the challenge of global climate change – might be organised in the age of the Anthropocene. We understand the term ‘Anthropocene’ to be characterised by crisis, on one hand, and by promise, on the other. In particular, we aim to raise doubts on the dominant perspective on the organisation of climate engineering, which assumes these approaches to be regulated through legalistic means. Drawing an analogy to the early development stages of nuclear weapons, we point out that, instead of following a legalistic rationale, climate engineering organisation might pursue a logic of technical feasibility, political acceptance and bureaucratic momentum.

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