The Need for Governance of Climate Geoengineering

Abstract

Keeping global temperature rise to within 1.5–2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is looking increasingly unlikely through mitigation alone. While increased adaptation to inevitable climate impacts will be necessary, a new realism is creeping into the climate debate. A growing number of scientists are proposing geoengineering technologies to deal with the expected shortfall, both through carbon dioxide removal and possibly through solar radiation management. But both approaches bring risks and pose significant governance challenges, and would likely affect different communities in different ways. As geoengineering moves mainstream, it is time to put governance at the heart of future discussion, and to broaden the debate from academia to governments, treaty bodies, faith groups, and civic organizations.The Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative is a major new effort to catalyze this conversation, bringing together players from a wide range of social, geographical, and professional backgrounds. It argues that policymakers need to take an ethical risk management approach, informed by continued research. How should transborder and transgenerational ethical issues be addressed? How will governance frameworks withstand geopolitical change? Can we build on existing international treaties and institutions, or do we need new ones? And most immediately, how should further research on solar engineering be governed—given current plans to start experiments in the stratosphere? In a geoengineered world, who controls the “global thermostat”?

Organising the unthinkable in times of crises: Will climate engineering become the weapon of last resort in the Anthropocene?

“…While it is not our intention to present a deterministic argument about what will happen, we find it important to keep in mind what could happen concerning the organisation of CE in the age of the Anthropocene. While the academic discussion and practical consideration of the organisation and governance of CE moves forward (Pasztor, 2017; Pasztor et al, 2016; Turkaly et al, 2017), we maintain that the possibility of CE taking the path described above should be carefully considered and, if necessary and desired, safeguards implemented.…”

Climate Change and Hybrid Warfare Strategies

“…Geotech research is often being undertaken by corporations, in part because national governments may be constrained by legal conventions such as ENMOD (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques), but also because no governance mechanisms exist to address use of these new technologies. 32 It would be entirely possible, to use a hypothetical example, for Pakistan to contract SpaceX to deploy technologies developed by China, in an attempt to prevent further melt of Himalayan glaciers. The issue is that no clear responsibility may exist, or mechanism for 'downstream' groups affected to protest such actions through formal channels.…”

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

“…Second, SG is believed to act faster in combatting global warming than any other strategy. For instance, for a delivery cost of five to ten billion dollars a year, a fleet of airplanes or balloons could deposit enough aerosols in the stratosphere to counteract within weeks a significant fraction of the global warming caused since industrialization (Moriyama et al., ; Pasztor, ). Third, SG compared to other approaches, could have regional or global impact with limited economic input, despite no longer being considered ‘incredibly cheap’ (Moriyama et al., ), as originally claimed (Barrett, ).…”

“…On sociopolitical grounds researching SG could trigger a competitive political dynamic that would induce agents to match one another's efforts out of fear of being left behind (Maas and Comardicea, ). A further major problem derives from SG's relatively undemanding technological and economical delivery (Moriyama et al., ), which could engender uncoordinated action leading to unpredictable economic and moral burdens and risks (Pasztor, ). Overall, SG may clash with the current international relations and institutions and thus generate conflicts that could radically change geopolitics (Morton, ), as well as – if intended as a stopgap – produce a security hazard that could undermine effective global mitigation and even global governance (Corry, ).…”