The Paradox of Climate Engineering (original) (raw)

The international politics of geoengineering: The feasibility of Plan B for tackling climate change.

Security Dialogue, 2017

Geoengineering technologies aim to make large-scale and deliberate interventions in the climate system possible. A typical framing is that researchers are exploring a ‘Plan B’ in case mitigation fails to avert dangerous climate change. Some options are thought to have the potential to alter the politics of climate change dramatically, yet in evaluating whether they might ultimately reduce climate risks, their political and security implications have so far not been given adequate prominence. This article puts forward what it calls the ‘security hazard’ and argues that this could be a crucial factor in determining whether a technology is able, ultimately, to reduce climate risks. Ideas about global governance of geoengineering rely on heroic assumptions about state rationality and a generally pacific international system. Moreover, if in a climate engineered world weather events become something certain states can be made directly responsible for, this may also negatively affect prospects for ‘Plan A’, i.e. an effective global agreement on mitigation.

Climate Engineering in Global Climate Governance: Implications for Participation and Linkage

Transnational Environmental Law, 2013

The 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 unilater...

Human Intervention in the Earth’s Climate: The Governance of Geoengineering in 2025+

Geoengineering, or climate engineering, is the umbrella term for large-scale technological interventions into the climate system that seek to counter some of the effects of global warming. Due to limited progress in reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions thus far, geoengineering has been increasingly investigated as a potential addition to the portfolio of climate responses. At this point, however, the shape and role that geoengineering will take in the future remain highly uncertain. In this report, we look 10 years ahead, at the year 2025, and present two scenarios of geoengineering’s possible evolution, with the goal of providing policy recommendations for its effective governance. Geoengineering technologies are generally divided into approaches that aim to reflect sunlight away from the earth (solar radiation management, SRM), and approaches that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide removal, CDR). This report focuses on SRM interventions, and particularly on those methods that aim to reflect sunlight by injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere. Such interventions raise important governance issues that are different from those raised by CDR techniques. This is because SRM would have a quick, global effect, could be deployed by a single actor or a small group of actors at a relatively low cost, and would have different impacts on different regions of the world. SRM is also likely to be perceived as a more fundamental intervention than CDR into the workings of the planet, with the potential for significant societal conflict to result from different worldviews and value systems. Most CDR technologies, on the other hand, would act only over long time scales, are prohibitively expensive at the moment and would require collaboration between many actors in order to have a significant effect on the climate. SRM has also generated various concerns. First, it has been argued that SRM would create a “moral hazard” by reducing the incentive for states to engage in mitigation and adaptation efforts, for SRM may prove to be faster, cheaper and less difficult to agree upon in international negotiations. Second, its potential impacts are highly uncertain. Factors that will be particularly difficult to predict and understand include regional and local impacts on agricultural production, water resources and biodiversity. Third, it has been questioned whether it is ethically permissible to interfere with Earth-system processes at such a fundamental level. The global governance of SRM will have to take these concerns into account. Although SRM is still in its infancy and may take decades to research, develop and deploy, it is precisely this early stage of development that offers a critical window of opportunity for developing collaborative and inclusive approaches to effective global governance of the potential SRM life cycle, or parts thereof.

Climate engineering: The way forward?

Environmental Development, 2012

The deliberate large-scale manipulation of the climate is increasingly being discussed as a potential tool to ensure the basic condition for a sustainable future: a habitable climate. While far from the ideal solution, the rate of climate change continues to outpace our attempts at a response, prompting some scientists and politicians to call for the consideration of climate engineering or geoengineering to avoid catastrophic climate change, while political processes to reduce greenhouse gases catch up. A November 2010 expert meeting was held at UNESCO to raise awareness of geoengineering, its potential to counteract climate change and its risks, and to broaden the discussion within the international community. Potential geoengineering methods include solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal techniques that are largely theoretical and remain untested, despite a long history. Responsible research can only proceed, and informed decisions be made, once governance structures have been developed beyond mere principles insufficient to guide researchers and policy makers. At the same time, realistic communication on these activities must increase and improve so that civil society can play a role in determining acceptable levels and types of human intervention. Appropriate geoengineering research should be considered for solar geoengineering methods that promise to quickly and affordably decrease global mean temperature, and for carbon geoengineering methods that target the core problem of climate change by directly removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A small cadre of scientists and policy makers has advanced the discussion of geoengineering and its likely impacts, but the path to a sustainable future cannot Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Starting the Dialogue on Climate Engineering Governance: A World Commission

2017

• Climate engineering-also called geoengineering or climate intervention or remediation-can, if appropriately governed, reduce climate change risks beyond what mitigation and adaptation can do alone, and may be essential to achieve the Paris Agreement temperature targets. • Geoengineering, however-in particular, solar geoengineering-poses not only significant risks but also major governance challenges. • Accordingly, international dialogue on climate engineering governance, with broad participation, is urgently needed, but existing institutions are not well equipped to support it. • A promising first step in such a dialogue would be to establish a world commission on climate engineering or similar high-level consultative body. Climate Engineering: Its Contributions and Risks It is possible to actively modify global environmental processes to offset some of the harm caused by elevated greenhouse gases. Such intentional global modification takes two forms: modifying the global carbon cycle, by removing carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere, and altering the earth's radiation balance, mainly by reflecting away a little incoming sunlight (Royal Society 2009; National Academy of Sciences 2015). If properly used, each method offers the prospect of reducing climate change risks in ways that the main climate responses, mitigation and adaptation, cannot do alone. Indeed, it is increasingly likely that the targets set at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris-holding global heating well below 2°C and aiming for 1.5°C-will require large-scale use of one or both types of climate engineering (Keith 2017). The two types of climate engineering differ substantially in their effects and risks, as well as their governance needs, with solar methods posing the greater challenges. Carbon removal can slow-or, if done at huge scale, reverse-the rising of atmospheric CO 2 from human emissions, and all resulting impacts, but it is costly and slow: pulling CO 2 out of the air is like draining a lake through a straw. In their distribution of costs, and in their potential risks and benefits, carbon interventions are roughly similar to mitigation, so are unlikely to fundamentally disrupt international climate politics. By contrast, sunlight methods (also called solar geoengineering) are virtually certain to disrupt climate politics (Parson and Ernst 2013). Of several proposed solar methods, the most promising would spray a reflective mist in the upper atmosphere, to scatter roughly one percent of incoming sunlight. This could cool the Earth roughly half a degree Celsius within a year or so, at a direct cost of a few billion dollars per year to sustain the effect-remarkably fast and cheap, relative to other responses. It could thus allow intervention on short notice to slow or reduce severe impending changes; alternatively, it could be used

Climate Engineering Under the Paris Agreement

43(12) Environmental Law Reporter, 2019

Recent assessments of the international community’s ability to hold the increase of global average temperature to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit that increase to 1.5°C, indicate that this goal is unlikely to be achieved without large-scale implementation of climate engineering (CE) technologies. In light of the prominent, albeit contested, role that CE is likely to play in international climate policy, this Article analyzes the specific provisions of the Paris Agreement with a view to assessing the extent to which the Agreement can provide an institutional framework to effectively govern CE internationally, and how it may shape the development and implementation of CE options. In particular, the Article examines a number of critical interpretive questions that will need to be addressed as states begin to develop CE technologies at large scales, including the need to provide guidance respecting the acceptability of exceeding the Paris targets before drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels, the challenges for equity, human rights, and sustainability objectives that CE poses, and the need to incorporate CE technologies into accounting and incentive structures.

Climate Engineering and International Law: Last Resort or the End of Humanity?

Review of European Community & International Environmental Law, 2011

Climate engineering is increasingly being considered as a policy to supplement mitigation and adaptation as strategies to address anthropogenic climate change. Based on a review of the methods, goals and risks of climate engineering, this article focuses on solar radiation management, exploring the existing international legal framework and discussing options for future policies. It is argued that solar radiation management should be prohibited from the outset due to inescapable uncertainty regarding its effects. 2 It is a madness, however, that completely lacks Hamlet's cynicism. 3 See ETC Group, n. 1 above, at 18.