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GEOENGINEERING OUR CLIMATE
An emerging discourse
Jason J. Blackstock and Sean Low
In 2006 Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, renowned for his contributions to understanding and addressing our planetary ozone layer crisis, published a paper that drew new attention to old ideas (Crutzen, 2006). Within it he suggested that, if it remained unchecked, the mounting impacts of human-induced climate change could become so damaging that humanity might need to explore ways of intentionally cooling the Earth’s climate to counteract it. This paper, coming as it did amid mounting international concern about anthropogenic climate change, catalysed what has since evolved into an expanding global discussion about geoengineering – the deliberate, large-scale alteration of the Earth’s climate system.
The specific idea that Crutzen described for intentionally altering our climate system – that of injecting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to act as tiny reflectors, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the ground and thereby cooling the planet – had been around for decades (Keith, 2000). In recent years, the proposed engineering of planetary sunshades has been discussed alongside a second kind of intervention: the creation of new carbon sinks, either through novel technological means or by enhancing the capacity of natural systems to do so. Respectively termed solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches, these two distinct categories are still often referred to together as geoengineering. However, this is not without protest from those who argue that the different objectives, characteristics, and trajectories in research and policy of various SRM and CDR approaches outweigh the value of discussing them together as deliberate and sustained attempts at climate management. This is an unfinished and evolving debate, which we return to briefly later in this introduction.
For now, we note that such ideas for intentionally engineering the Earth’s climate to suit human needs and aspirations have a long and complex intellectual history – a history that the authors of the four chapters presented in Part I of this book explore using a range of lenses and examples. Prior to Crutzen’s provocative article, however, geoengineering concepts were widely dismissed as hubristic and far-fetched, belonging more to the realm of futuristic science fiction than modern science. Rigorous scientific research into geoengineering concepts was scarce and limited almost entirely to theoretic analyses and calculations. More importantly, serious public or political conversations about actually developing and potentially deploying geoengineering technologies were non-existent.
By the mid-noughties, a clear scientific consensus had emerged on climate change: humans were the primary cause; the risks to humanity were numerous, serious, and escalating; and near-term actions to mitigate the human causes of climate change were essential. Unfortunately, the politics of the mid-noughties did not align with the scientific consensus. Fierce political debates about climate policies raged, spurred by concerns about possible economic costs and social disruptions from changing the industries and lifestyles underlying the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. These debates generated widespread concern among scientific and environmental communities that the political will needed to effectively mitigate climate change might not emerge in time to avoid serious, potentially catastrophic damage to future populations around the world. Published within this context, Crutzen’s reframing of geoengineering – as perhaps being able to forestall or ameliorate the future ravages of climate change, should humanity not act quickly enough to avoid them – attracted unprecedented new attention to these concepts.
This reframing was not uncontroversial – and it remains heatedly contested today. The notion of intentionally altering the Earth’s climate to counteract the climatic change that humanity was already unintentionally causing soon became the subject of considerable contemplation. In Part II of this book, authors of the seven chapters present and explore both their own and others’ framings of climate engineering ideas from a diversity of perspectives. How should such planet-altering technologies be thought about and discussed? What are the ethics surrounding their development and potential use? Where should they fit among the suite of other potential responses to the risks of climate change? Are they viable even as a last resort? Widely varying implicit and explicit answers to these and many similar questions are evident throughout the contributions to this book.
Alongside the burgeoning ethical and philosophical discussions, new scientific research agendas also emerged. As reflected on by Crutzen himself in this book, following his 2006 article “the openness of the [scientific] community towards research” into potential geoengineering concepts “changed rapidly” (Lawrence and Crutzen, Chapter 13). The ensuing decade would see numerous scientific assessments of geoengineering technologies by internationally respected scientific organisations and groups (e.g. Novim, 2009; Royal Society, 2009; APS, 2011; IPCC, 2011; National Research Council, 2015a, 2015b; EuTRACE, 2015), and the emergence of numerous modelling studies, technology design and development activities, and even some early field experiments. The last decade of research, along with perspectives on what the next decade might hold, are explored by the authors of the five chapters presented in Part III of this book.
Despite this increased attention, progress towards the technological development of deployable geoengineering technologies has remained limited over the last decade. No country has yet taken the bold step of formally authorising or significantly funding the technological development of geoengineering alternatives. While the scientific research has repeatedly reinforced the potential for geoengineering technologies to reduce many impacts of rising temperatures, certain scenarios could result in different regional outcomes (see Irvine et al., 2016 for an accessible summary of the Earth systems science and modelling of SRM). Similar to climate change, the planetary-scale nature of prospective geoengineering impacts raises challenging political and legal questions of responsibility and sovereignty for the international community to grapple with. Whether or not existing global institutions and still emerging frameworks can effectively manage these issues is the subject of both expanding scholarship and debate in some international forums. In the four chapters presented in Part IV of this book, authors explore how climate geoengineering has been, or may soon be, tackled by existing international institutions.
Of course, the lack of serious political action should not be interpreted as a lack of serious political perspectives. If developed or even just formally explored, geoengineering technologies could be a game-changer in international climate politics, and possibly even in global politics generally. Unsurprisingly, diverse perspectives have quickly emerged on how geoengineering alternatives could or should evolve, shaped at least in part by national and regional political contexts. The seven chapters in Part V of this book attempt to provide a snapshot of the range of political perspectives that have been articulated over the last decade, with authors from diverse backgrounds and perspectives making compelling arguments about how geoengineering could be framed and managed. No one book could hope to do justice to the full diversity of viewpoints that exist on geoengineering. What these contributions – and others in this book – do capture is how rapidly the notion of geoengineering has infused various and sundry policy discussions and debates worldwide.
Will expanding scientific research into geoengineering lead to technological development and deployment of geoengineering technologies? Should it? How will the global discussion about geoengineering evolve? Whose perspectives will be taken into account as it does? How should humanity ultimately govern geoengineering? There are no simple answers to any of these questions, although proposals for how to approach them abound. The final section of this book (Part VI) is devoted to authors exploring what the effective governance of still emerging geoengineering research and technologies might look like, though these chapters are far from the final word. Like the other contributions in this volume, these chapters advance and further clarify the governance challenges facing humanity with the exploration of an idea as profound as potentially geoengineering our climate.
Coming over a decade after Paul Crutzen’s original paper, our hope is that the contributions throughout this book will help readers formulate their own perspectives on this complex and evolving debate, and about which ethical, legal, and political questions are most important for them to further explore and engage. We hope this helps empower our readers to decide for themselves how they can most effectively contribute to the growing global discourse about the role geoengineering technologies should or should not play within humanity’s response to climate change.
This book aims to provide readers with an accessible and multidisciplinary introduction to the complex human dimensions of geoengineering. Alo...
