Dual high‐stake emerging technologies: a review of the climate engineering research literature

Abstract

The literature on climate engineering, or geoengineering, covers a wide range of potential methods for solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal that vary in technical aspects, temporal and spatial scales, potential environmental impacts, and legal, ethical, and governance challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of social and natural science papers on this topic since 2006 and listed in SCOPUS and Web of Science. It adds to previous literature reviews by combining analyses of bibliometric patterns and of trends in how the technologies are framed in terms of content, motivations, stakes, and recommendations. Most peer-reviewed climate engineering literature does not weigh the risks and new, additional, benefits of the various technologies, but emphasizes either the potential dangers of climate engineering or the climate change consequences of refraining from considering the research, development, demonstration, and/or deployment of climate engineering technologies. To analyse this polarity, not prevalent in the literature on earlier emerging technologies, we explore the concept of dual high-stake technologies. As appeals to fear have proven ineffective in spurring public engagement in climate change, we may not expect significant public support for climate engineering technologies whose rationale is not to achieve benefits in addition to avoiding the high stakes of climate change. Furthermore, in designing public engagement exercises, researchers must be careful not to steer discussions by emphasizing one type of stake framing over another. A dual high-stake, rather than risk-benefit, framing should also be considered in analysing some emerging technologies with similar characteristics, for example, nanotechnology for pollution control.

Making sense of climate engineering: a focus group study of lay publics in four countries

“…Unlike climate engineering, many other emerging technologies with potentially transformative impacts on society, such as genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology and nuclear power, have significant proportions of promoters and enthusiasts and are rhetorically tightly coupled with progressive and even utopian ideals that climate engineering lacks Hansson 2014a, 2014b). By contrast, a review of peer-reviewed papers on climate engineering published between 2006 and 2013 found that few scientific publications ended in an explicit 'yes' or 'no' to climate engineering, and that less than 2% or the reviewed papers unconditionally advocated deployment (Linnér and Wibeck 2015). A common recommendation in the research literature is that more research and experimentation is needed, though such recommendations are accompanied by calls for caution (Dilling and Hauser 2013).…”

“…Very few hopes of positive side effects, such as increased food production or economic growth, are connected to climate engineering (e.g. Linnér and Wibeck 2015). Expectations for climate engineering can even be described as negative or dystopian: scientists do not promise to succeed in developing climate engineering, and eventual deployment may not even benefit society aside from a chance of negating another major harm (i.e.…”

Questioning the technological fix to climate change – Lay sense-making of geoengineering in Sweden

“…In the scientific and public debate, only few scientists declare any positive side-effects of implementing GE or confirm a better future with GE (Anshelm and Hansson, 2014;Linnér & Wibeck, 2015). One could claim that, despite recent advances in modelling research, the same fundamental issues are still at stake, such as: What views of democracy inform global governance (Heyward and Rayner, 2013;Macnaghten and Szerszynski, 2013)?…”

WIREs Climate Change 2018: An editorial essay

“…Second, is to offer clear and transparent criteria for bounding the issue/field being reviewed and how relevant literature is selected. The WIREs review by Linnér and Wibeck () nicely operationalizes this principle. Third, is to be critical, to pass judgment on a field of published literature or to develop an argument.…”