The Ethics of Engineering the Climate

Baatz, Christian; Heyward, Clare; Stelzer, Harald

doi:10.3197/096327115x14497392134766

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The generally acknowledged families of soft constraints are economic, institutional and culturalthe latter refers to customs, traditions and values Global Policy (2019) Solar Geoengineering of a society or community and includes morality (Lawford-Smith, 2013). Given the host of ethical concerns raised by SG and their severity (Baatz et al, 2016;Hamilton, 2013b), morality is in the current analysis the most relevant soft constraint among the cultural ones. Therefore, the notion of feasibility adopted here requires that the possible frictions of SG with the constraints imposed by the economic, institutional and moral status quo be identified and examined.…”

Section: Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The generally acknowledged families of soft constraints are economic, institutional and cultural – the latter refers to customs, traditions and values of a society or community and includes morality (Lawford‐Smith, ). Given the host of ethical concerns raised by SG and their severity (Baatz et al., ; Hamilton, 2013b), morality is in the current analysis the most relevant soft constraint among the cultural ones.…”

Section: Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Lawford‐Smith () concedes, soft constraints have different relative strengths depending on the context in which states of affairs occur. Given the moral contentiousness of SG (Baatz et al., ) and its almost endless moral implications, this technology vigorously challenges dominant beliefs and attitudes (Svoboda, ), as it would involve new conceptions of the Earth and of human beings (Hamilton, ). Therefore, moral soft constraints are particularly significant for SG feasibility.…”

Section: Constraints To Sg Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1. For an in-depth overview see, for instance, Preston (2013), Baatz et al (2016) and Svoboda (2017). 2.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering

Grasso

2019

Global Policy

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Solar geoengineering (SG) is considered a promising, albeit controversial, climate engineering technology to help reduce predicted global warming. However, the complexity of SG raises serious doubts about its political practicability. The objective of this article is to investigate this technology's feasibility, a fundamental dimension of said practicability. Feasibility is here understood as a political property: the higher the feasibility of a state of affairs ranks, the greater its eventual political practicability. According to this perspective, the less SG clashes with economic, institutional, and moral soft constraints, the more feasible it becomes, and hence the greater its political practicability. An analysis of economic and institutional soft constraints points to a high degree of SG feasibility. This feasibility is, however, limited by the perceived non‐bearable moral costs which SG involves. Given the greater weight of moral soft constraints, SG's overall feasibility is therefore low. Based on these indications, the article offers suggestions for lessening SG's friction with soft constraints, especially with the highly sensitive moral ones, with the aim of increasing this technology's feasibility. On the basis of this heightened feasibility, the paper concludes with policy recommendations which improves the practicability of SG.

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Section: Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Constraints To Sg Feasibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1. For an in-depth overview see, for instance, Preston (2013), Baatz et al (2016) and Svoboda (2017). 2.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering

Grasso

2019

Global Policy

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“…Here, we show relative changes in the assessment of different CE ideas inferred from studies published as part of the Priority Program, acknowledging that other dimensions were also investigated. Studies on ethical aspects [Sillmann et al, 2015;Baatz et al, 2016] proposed that far-reaching mitigation is morally obligatory prior to any engagement into SRM [Baatz, 2016], and the examination of public perception and acceptance of CE revealed that knowledge about the possibility to lower global temperature through aerosol injection does not reduce individual mitigation efforts [Merk et al, 2016].…”

Section: Key Findings Of the First Phase Of The Priority Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Oschlies

Klepper

2017

Earth's Future

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The historical developments are reviewed that have led from a bottom-up responsibility initiative of concerned scientists to the emergence of a nationwide interdisciplinary Priority Program on the assessment of Climate Engineering (CE) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Given the perceived lack of comprehensive and comparative appraisals of different CE methods, the Priority Program was designed to encompass both solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) ideas and to cover the atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic realm. First, key findings obtained by the ongoing Priority Program are summarized and reveal that, compared to earlier assessments such as the 2009 Royal Society report, more detailed investigations tend to indicate less efficiency, lower effectiveness, and often lower safety. Emerging research trends are discussed in the context of the recent Paris agreement to limit global warming to less than two degrees and the associated increasing reliance on negative emission technologies. Our results show then when deployed at scales large enough to have a significant impact on atmospheric CO 2 , even CDR methods such as afforestation-often perceived as "benign"-can have substantial side effects and may raise severe ethical, legal, and governance issues. We suppose that before being deployed at climatically relevant scales, any negative emission or CE method will require careful analysis of efficiency, effectiveness, and undesired side effects.

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Mitigation of Climate Change: Introduction

Ussiri

Lal

2017

Carbon Sequestration for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

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The Ethics of Engineering the Climate

Cited by 15 publications

References 28 publications

Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering

Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Mitigation of Climate Change: Introduction

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