‘It’s just a Band-Aid!’: Public engagement with geoengineering and the politics of the climate crisis

Carvalho, António; Riquito, Mariana

doi:10.1177/09636625221095353

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Interestingly though, heightened climate worry was associated with both more positive and more negative emotions. From the openended data, it appears that whilst some perceive climate urgency as a justification for any novel CDR [37,66,67], others are worried about CDR being used as a 'band aid' or deterring emissions reduction efforts [68,69]. This implies that communicators should be more cautious about the use of the 'urgency' framing, since it may elicit very different emotional responses from people.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public attitudes and emotions toward novel carbon removal methods in alternative sociotechnical scenarios

Cox,

Bellamy,

Waller

2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Despite high expectations about the role of carbon removal in meeting global climate targets, many of the proposed techniques remain nascent. This is especially so for techniques with potential for large-scale, permanent removal of CO2, such as Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) and Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE). In such a context, understanding public attitudes is crucial but challenging, since we do not have enough information about the sociotechnical configurations which might accompany such proposals over future timescales. Carbon removal at scale will not take place in a vacuum – it will co-evolve within political, social, economic, and legal structures which in turn will have a strong influence on public attitudes. This study used a nationally-representative survey (n=1,978) in the UK to test the impact of alternative sociotechnical systems on public attitudes to DACCS and OAE. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five scenario conditions, representing different forms of governance logic (top-down vs bottom-up) and market logic (planned vs liberal economy), plus one with minimal sociotechnical information. We find that the scenario condition significantly impacted perceptions of OAE, with participants preferring its implementation within a bottom-up, planned economy scenario, and rejecting scenarios which most closely resembled the status quo. There were no significant differences between scenarios for DACCS, suggesting that the technology may be more flexible across alternative sociotechnical arrangements. OAE arouses more negative emotions, particularly worry about impacts on ocean ecosystems, whereas DACCS arouses more hope. We found that climate worry is associated with stronger emotions – both positive and negative – toward both techniques, thus CDR could be polarising for the most climate-worried, likely due to tensions between climate urgency and concerns about deterring emissions reductions. The most important criteria for future CDR deployment were deemed to be biodiversity, durability, and cost, with a strong discourse around the current cost-of-living crisis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public attitudes and emotions toward novel carbon removal methods in alternative sociotechnical scenarios

Cox,

Bellamy,

Waller

2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Technologies are extensively discussed as solutions for environmental problems [58][59][60][61][62][63][64], and these solutions are evaluated through the lens of science and technology governance concepts and various ethics fields [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78], discussions that focus on enabling well-being or preventing decreases in well-being due to problematic advancements in science and technology.…”

Section: Environment and Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Impact of Environmental Activism: A Survey and a Scoping Review

Wolbring

Gill

2023

Sustainability

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Environmental issues increasingly impact the well-being, the ability to have a good life, of people, especially members of marginalized groups. Dealing with environmental issues is a long-standing and increasing focus of activism. Youth are increasingly involved in environmental activism. One focus of environmental education is how to instill the role of being a change agent into students. Marginalized groups experience many problems in relation to environmental issues, and environmental activism impacts the lived experience of marginalized groups in diverse ways. A pre-study scoping review suggested a gap in academic inquiry around “the impact of environmental activism”. The aim of our study was to decrease this gap and to better understand the perceived impact of environmental activism. We used two approaches to achieve this aim. In the first step, we used a survey to ask undergraduate students about their views on the impact of environmental activism. Given the results of the survey and that students need access to information to be able to fulfill their roles as critical thinkers and change agents, we then performed a scoping review of abstracts from Scopus, Web of Science, and the 70 databases accessible through EBSCO-HOST to ascertain what topics and which marginalized groups are engaged with in the academic inquiry of environmental activism. We found that participants felt that environmental activism has an impact on all the social groups and entities we gave them as choices, although there were differences in how positively they viewed the different groups and entities being affected. The participants also indicated that many of the well-being indicators were impacted by environmental activism, although around 30% felt that they did not have information they needed to form an opinion. Finally, our participants felt that different social groups have different ability expectations. Our scoping review found that many of the groups and indicators that our participants felt were impacted by environmental activism were not covered in the abstracts we analyzed. Our findings suggest many gaps and the need for actions and opportunities in relation to the topic of the “impact of environmental activism”.

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“…The technology driven neocolonial future looks even bleaker if we consider calls for planetary-scale geoengineering projects to mitigate climate change, primarily driven by Global North actors 52 . This deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system might have several unknown consequences whose negative effects are likely to be borne by people who contributed the least to the climate crisis 53 .…”

Section: Technological Dominance As Ongoing Colonialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the need for an anticolonial perspective in engineering education and practice

Mitra,

Sarkar,

Ganguli-Mitra

2023

Nat Commun

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‘It’s just a Band-Aid!’: Public engagement with geoengineering and the politics of the climate crisis

Cited by 8 publications

References 30 publications

Public attitudes and emotions toward novel carbon removal methods in alternative sociotechnical scenarios

Public attitudes and emotions toward novel carbon removal methods in alternative sociotechnical scenarios

Potential Impact of Environmental Activism: A Survey and a Scoping Review

On the need for an anticolonial perspective in engineering education and practice

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