Why do actors oppose the development and use of solar Geoengineering technologies
H simmens
“Why do actors oppose the development and potential future use of solar geoengineering technologies? This article maps and analyzes growing opposition to the development of planetary-scale solar geoengineering technologies among three actor groups—govern-
ments, civil society and academics.
While much social science research on such technolo-
gies has addressed questions of feasibility, acceptance, legality, the desirability of more research or hypothetical governance designs, hardly any empirical analyses exist of the opposition to these technologies.
Drawing on numerous policy documents, civil society
declarations and academic statements, this article identifies eight diverse rationales that underpin current opposition from governments, intergovernmental bodies, civil society
and academic communities to solar geoengineering.
These rationales include:
concerns about:
risks and uncertainties of potential solar geoengineering schemes,
their failure to address the root causes of climate change,
risks of delaying mitigation,
likely violations of international law,
entrenchment of unjust power relations,
presumed ungovernability,
technological hubris, and the
violation of the Earth’s integrity.
Our analysis also finds evi-
dence of cross-fertilization among these rationales and a gradual normalization of a global‘non-use’ discourse.
Overall, these critical perspectives increasingly shape the normative and political terrain within which solar geoengineering is being deliberated.”
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Herb
Thanks for sharing this. I was listening today to Nate Hagen’s latest podcast, on Human Exceptionalism, where these arguments against geoengineering came up. I have attached a comment I made at the YouTube link.
The problem with this paper by Biermann et al is that these ideological opponents of geoengineering have seriously confused ideas about ethics and science. Many just fail to recognise that if we do not restore albedo we face inevitable collapse. And as Eliot Jacobson explained in my illuminating conversation with him, many think collapse would be a good thing, so don’t want to delay it by reflecting sunlight. None of their arguments stack up as a case to ban testing. They are literally condemning the world to a new dark age. What this all means is that these opponents are outside the frame of effective constituencies for climate action. As such, it may be best to ignore them, and focus instead on allying with people who want to achieve a realistic path to stabilising the planetary climate. The strong influence of these anti-cooling ideas means what is needed is to construct a well-funded advocacy program that can combat the disinformation they spread in the public domain.
Regards
Robert Tulip
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/35734EAD-B6FF-4761-B42B-54282A33D6DC%40gmail.com.
robert...@gmail.com
Hi Herb & RobertT
Interestingly, while I might take issue, Robert, with some of your arguments, I couldn't agree more with your conclusion. This is a classic case of many paths leading to the same destination!
I've included Herb here because when Robert says 'what is needed is to construct a well-funded advocacy program that can combat the disinformation they spread in the public domain', you'll recognise that we reached the same conclusion about three years ago. Sadly that initiative didn't lead anywhere.
Robert, on the comment you make that 'many think collapse would be a good thing', I wonder whether such people, or those dismissing them, are confusing ends with means. It seems incomprehensible that anyone would see collapse in and of itself 'a good thing'. Are they suggesting that being in a permanent state of collapse would bring some benefits? Surely, the point they're making, or should be making, is that the collapse has become a necessary stage in delivering whatever the 'good thing' is that they're seeking. The argument would be that the current system is irretrievably broken and increasingly malignant, and crucially, no longer amenable to an orderly transition to whatever that 'good thing' might be. It would follow that the time has come to let it collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions, and thereby create the conditions for a regeneration. Of course, there's no guarantee that the phoenix that rises from the ashes wouldn't be as ghastly as what we've got now, but if you believe in the indefatigability and indomitable spirit of humans as a species, sooner or later we'd get it more or less right and the march of progress and increasing wellbeing will once again dominanate.
It is possible to cloak this in a moral and ethical framing but it is also possible to see it totally amorally as the natural cycle of complex adaptive systems.
My own position is that I draw a distinction between the five (or possibly six) generations that I have a personal connection with - from my grandparents to my grandchildren. That span is the temporal limit of my ethical and moral concerns. The rest, those that died a long time ago, and those that won't be born for a another hundred years or more, are just intellectual concepts. I can think about them, but I don't have any moral or ethical connection with them (again, I'd refer you to Parfit's Non Identity Problem). Crucially, there is no rational way in which anything my generation might do that can be reasonably assessed to be good or bad for those distant future people. There's no guarantee that anything we do that might have been beneficial for them won't be undermined by a subsequent generation, and similarly that anything bad we might do, won't be put right by a subsequent generation. Indeed, it may be that mistakes we make might serendipitously lead to great advances that would not otherwise have arisen. Moreover, apart from the basic animal necessities of life, we can have little idea of what their changing needs will be through time. These future people are not a homogenous bunch of folk just like us (whoever 'us' is.)
I can hear you screaming 'What about global warming!!!' Absolutely, that's something new and radically different. Homo sapiens has never in all its several hundred thousands of years been confronted by a problem like global warming. That's why we're making such a mess of dealing with it - we're making our responses up on the fly. There are no precedents. Our institutions weren't designed to cope with a problem like climate change (the UNFCCC is a perfect example of an institution set up to fail in its primary task). Yet climate change does have the capacity seriously negatively to impact humans and life more generally, for generations to come.
The moral response to this is understandable. But the crucial question is whether it's effective. So far the signs don't look too promising We can debate why this might be. My own view is that consciously or not, most people are like me and feel any moral or ethical responsibility they might have to all those future people is either zero or is overwhelmed by the ethical and moral responsibilities they have to those in the here and now; those five generations. My guess is that concern for future people is subject to discounting, just like a financial instrument.
A good start might be to get the idea of 'sustainability' deeply entrenched into our culture. It's not a new idea but its most recent affirmation has been in the Brundtland Report from 1987. It underpins the 'planetary boundaries' concept that Rockström has championed. This notion removes the object of moral concern from future people and places it on the planet itself. If we look after the planet, the planet will look after the life it supports. It's close to Lovelock and Margulis' notion of Gaia. Sadly, even that idea is not yet a dominant driver of the global economy, and doesn't look like being so any time soon.
So, I come back to those who think collapse might be a good thing. The central question is one about the practical politics of addressing climate change. Change always creates winners and losers. Rapid change makes this process more painful because the losers don't have time to adapt and so lessen the impacts of change. The doctrinal arguments for change are largely irrelevant here. Whether they are religious, moral, economic or whatever, has minimal impact on the nature and scale of change needed. The argument for change is that Earth is heating. That not only needs to stop, it also needs to be reversed. If that doesn't happen in pretty short order, widespread unpleasant changes will be forced on all life on Earth. Evidence suggests this is now likely to become unstoppable within the lifetime of much of today's population. That's the argument for change - let's do it!
On the other hand, if you consider that the reason we're in this mess to be the current socioeconomic system being seriously dysfunctional and the major reason for our despoliation of the planet, then it is perfectly logical to argue that that system must radically change to become consonant with planetary resources. If you also believe that the system has lost the capacity to make such a change in an orderly manner, then you will be receptive to it being done in a disorderly one, that being the price to be paid for putting things right.
It follows that the appropriate response to those wanting the system to collapse is to show them evidence of it changing in an orderly and timely manner, to something that is sustainable. There's a lot of people, including me, that are still looking for that evidence and not finding it.
We now need to be riding two horses at once. The first is to deploy whatever arguments are effective with different audiences to get across the risk management case for urgent action. Use doctrinal arguments if that's likely to turn you audience on. Use secular arguments where they are more likely to be compelling. Simultaneously we need to be planning for failure. Failure is no longer a remote possibility. Elon will be fine. He'll be on his rocket to Mars. What about the rest of life on Earth? Seriously planning for failure is more likely to galvanise efforts to avoid it, than it is to drive apathy and resignation.
In closing, my expectation is that we'll continue to do too little too late and 21st century humanity will unwittingly commit itself to the collapse phase of its adaptive cycle. Unfortunate, but don't fret too much, there will be a phoenix. Regeneration is also part of the cycle. If you want to put a positive spin on it, think of it as a catharsis.
RobertC
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/00ec01dcb1c4%248b080fe0%24a1182fa0%24%40rtulip.net.
Michael MacCracken
Hi Herb--The paper seems to mainly be expressing views on geoengineering applicable to proposals for geoengineering back in the 1950s and 1960s that were aimed at changing the climate back then in ways to gain access to needed resources and take on projects thought to be beneficial to society. As it turned out, such projects did not go forward, in part due to reasons of hubris and the other issues raised in the article. Melting of the Arctic to get at its presumed resources was, for example, an idea goes back to the 1870s, and there were a number of other such ideas. Now, 60 or so years later, these critical views of using geoengineering to alter the world away from its natural state are now being applied to geoengineering's proposed use to keep the world as close as possible to what it naturally was (so the reverse of the situation when the arguments were first assembled). In addition, with mitigation chosen as the preferred approach for dealing with climate change, the notion that this will not be sufficient and that the world will also need to resort to geoengineering is, in my view, being seen as a personal failure of those who had taken that position rather than a situation caused by the massiveness of the transition that is needed and the significant resources, technologies, and economical and political commitment needed to make it happen.
With so many locked in to their position that mitigation must be the only approach used, there has been a blizzard of articles opposed to geoengineering that has created a momentum of opposition that is now drowning out dissenting views. Those who are creating the blizzard seem to persist in part because they are getting credit for being in the mainstream that got its start 60 years ago, all without noting the different purpose of geoengineering applicable to the present situation. In few of these articles is there acceptance and accountability taken of what lies ahead without intervention if geoengineering is not tried--what will be their answers then.
Your fundamental question of the past several years, Herb, remains valid. I'll augment, however, with an insert in brackets for clarity: "If not now [after three decades of the UNFCCC international agreement calling for avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system and with global emissions still rising and nowhere near to being on a timely path to net zero that will avoid of order a doubling, if not more, of the current increase in global average temperature], then when [will the seriousness of the consequences be enough to stimulate a reconsideration of the 60 year old view that the authors of the article are arguing}?" None of those writing the articles of opposition to geoengineering seem willing to consider anything other than the mitigation-only approach that is failing, and, even with CDR and adaptation, seems to be getting closer and closer to failing to a disastrous degree.
As I recall, the talk that I gave at the DC Climate Week last year addressed most, if possibly not all, of the stated objections and concerns that the authors found were motivating the opposition. I'll see if I can briefly respond to each of the concerns that were identified. We do need to get a response out there, and perhaps you can help in preparing it. I would also note that the Open Letter Ron Baiman has been leading already addresses a number of the points.
Best, Mike MacCracken
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/35734EAD-B6FF-4761-B42B-54282A33D6DC%40gmail.com.
Herb
Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"
Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/35734EAD-B6FF-4761-B42B-54282A33D6DC%40gmail.com.
John Nissen
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/69bc4e26-4dcc-46fc-ab46-d52076d4553d%40comcast.net.
robert...@gmail.com
Hi John
I know I'm the resident party pooper so you'll hopefully forgive me if I ask how much weight you think the moral arguments will have when set against Russia and China (and probably US) economic interests in an Arctic East/West sea route and in exploiting its mineral wealth? Might they not see refreezing the Arctic as a bad idea?
RobertC