Solar radiation management is a form of geoengineering that involves the intentional manipulation of solar radiation with the aim of reducing global average temperature. This paper explores what precaution implies about the status of solar radiation management. It is argued that any form of solar radiation management that poses threats of catastrophe cannot constitute an appropriate precautionary measure against another threat of catastrophe, namely climate change. Research of solar radiation management is appropriate on a precautionary view only insofar as such research aims to identify whether any forms of solar radiation management could be implemented without creating new or exacerbating existing threats of catastrophe.
Climate change is no longer a distant possibility. Potentially harmful climatic changes are already underway. If we want to or believe we ought to minimize the harmfulness of eventual climate impacts it will therefore be necessary for us to adapt to our changing climate. As people will be differentially affected by climate impacts depending on when, where, and in what circumstances they live, adaptive measures will have to vary with context. It turns out that those least causally responsible for climate change are predicted to suffer the most from climate impacts. As these are disproportionally the world's poor and their vulnerability is partly due to their poverty, adaptation will often intersect with development. Determining who should be held responsible for meeting the costs of adaptation, the topic of this review, is therefore a difficult task. After reviewing the relevant literature, this review identifies the need for further work on the conceptual and practical issues that arise when thinking about the ethics of adaptation. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 687–700 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.132This article is categorized under:
Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change
Mitigating further anthropogenic changes to the global climate will require reducing greenhouse‐gas emissions (“abatement”), or else removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or diminishing solar input (“climate engineering”). Here, we develop and apply criteria to measure technical, economic, ecological, institutional, and ethical dimensions of, and public acceptance for, climate engineering strategies; provide a relative rating for each dimension; and offer a new interdisciplinary framework for comparing abatement and climate engineering options. While abatement remains the most desirable policy, certain climate engineering strategies, including forest and soil management for carbon sequestration, merit broad‐scale application. Other proposed strategies, such as biochar production and geological carbon capture and storage, are rated somewhat lower, but deserve further research and development. Iron fertilization of the oceans and solar radiation management, although cost‐effective, received the lowest ratings on most criteria. We conclude that although abatement should remain the central climate‐change response, some low‐risk, cost‐effective climate engineering approaches should be applied as complements. The framework presented here aims to guide and prioritize further research and analysis, leading to improvements in climate engineering strategies.
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