Engineering the Climate

The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management

Christopher J. Preston

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780739175415
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth's climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM's effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM's effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Extraordinary Ethics of Solar Radiation Management
• Present and Future Generations
• Geoengineering, Solidarity, and Moral RiskSincere thanks to Helen Daly, Rick Furtak, David Havlick, Leonard Kahn, Johann Klaassen, Jonathan Lee, Christopher Preston, and the members of the Colorado Springs Philosophy Discussion Group for many helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
• Might Solar Radiation Management Constitute a Dilemma?
• Domination and the Ethics of Solar Radiation ManagementThis paper was written and made possible by a National Science Foundation (NSF) summer research grant at Northeastern University (NSF Grant No. SES # 0609078). I would like to thank Christopher Preston, Ron Sandler, Steve Gardiner, and my summer fellows for reading various versions of this paper and providing invaluable assistance.
• Marginalized, Vulnerable, and Voiceless Populations
• Indigenous Peoples, Solar Radiation Management, and Consent
• Solar Radiation Management and Vulnerable Populations
• Solar Radiation Management and Nonhuman Species
• Moral Hazards and Hidden Benefits
• The World That Would Have Been
• Climate Remediation to Address Social Development Challenges
• Ethics of Framing and Rhetoric
• Insurance Policy or Technological Fix? The Ethical Implications of Framing Solar Radiation Management
• Public Concerns about the Ethics of Solar Radiation Management
• The Cultural Milieu
• The Setting of the Scene
• Between Babel and Pelagius
• Making Climates
• Bibliography
• Index
• Contributors