[New Paper] - Politics of 'risk-risk' climate discourse

[Duncan McLaren]

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Climate discourse today is rife with fears that critical thresholds and tipping points can no longer be defended, and in part as a result, media attention to high-risk interventions such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) has ballooned. A critical thread of the current discourse has been brewing for some time: the argument that while SAI is risky, we (the usual hypothetical global ‘we’, that is) must somehow judge its risks against the otherwise unavoidable risks of climate change.

From one perspective, this appears a common sense position. From another, it is an active effort to frame the debate in ways that admit only one conclusion …

In this new paper in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, I discuss the risk-risk framing, and how one might undertake meaningful and ethical risk-risk assessment of climate interventions. I hope it will be of interest to others in this group.

(I offer a brief discussion of the issues and implications in this linked in post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-frying-pan-fire-wrestling-risks-solar-duncan-mclaren-7qcue).

Best regards

Duncan