Even if geoengineering can help mitigate climate change, is it ethical?

(Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/Getty Images)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scientists from around the world have said it time and again: CO2 emissions need to be radically reduced in order to stop the world from warming to a point where it will trigger catastrophic climate change.

But radical reductions aren’t in place right now, which is why some scientists and policymakers are considering a controversial option: geoengineering, or the deliberate manipulation of the environment.

The discussion has recently taken centre stage as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. received $4 million to research geoengineering, with no confirmation as to what that might look like.

One of the more popular methods of geoengineering is solar radiation management (SRM). In this method, particles of sulphur or calcium carbonate are sprayed into the stratosphere, which makes solar radiation “bounce” off clouds back into space, creating a cooling effect. It’s the same process that happens after a large volcanic eruption.

There are many issues concerning the potential of employing such a method, including whether it is scientifically possible, economically viable and how a body like the United Nations might govern its use.

But another big one is whether it is ethical.

Thus far, geoengineering studies have been done primarily in labs using models. It’s unknown whether it would produce the desired effect on a larger scale or what the consequences might be.

However, several studies that have modelled SRM find that large-scale use of it could increase precipitation in some parts of the world — potentially in some of the regions in the tropics.

“If you’re talking about justice and equity, then the impacts of changing rainfall patterns are going to fall disproportionately on the poorest around the world,” said Emily Cox, an environmental policy researcher at Cardiff University as well as the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K.

Cox also noted that there is a philosophical discussion around intentional versus unintentional harm. For example, burning coal and emitting CO2 isn’t limited to borders and is already causing unintended consequences. Similarly, if we employ SRM, we could be causing unintentional harm for other countries.

“Everything we do affects other nations,” she said.

David Keith is a Canadian professor of applied physics at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, which is home to one of the leading geoengineering labs in the world. He disputes the findings that state SRM will increase precipitation.

“We had a big paper that was very well reported last year in [the journal] Nature Climate Change that contradicts that assumption,” he said.

There is clearly still dispute over the effects of geoengineering, but given the potential differences in outcome, it’s unlikely every country in the world will agree on the specifics of SRM. So what happens when one country says it doesn’t support it? How ethical would it be for another country to simply proceed?

There are “big philosophical questions here,” said Cox. As a result, “there’s a real danger of polarization.” SOURCE

This Questionable Billionaire-Backed Climate Change Plan Is Straight Out of a “Simpsons” Episode

Geoengineering, the controversial idea that we can hack the planet to cool it off, is popular with the rich but potentially disastrous.

One of the more iconic storylines from The Simpsons was the 1995 “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” To force the city to rely on his power plant nonstop, Mr. Burns, the richest man in Springfield, built a giant mechanical shade that literally blocked out the sun. When he was shot and left for dead, literally every person in town was a suspect. It turned out that Maggie shot him for an unrelated candy-taking offense, but blotting out the sun was why everyone else would want him dead. The sun-blocker was supposed to be an implausible rich person fantasy, a dumb and literal attempt to control the basic aspects of nature. Now, decades later, a similar method is gaining popularity as a way to fight climate change.

“Geoengineering” is the umbrella term for a bunch of different propositions that involve physically manipulating the climate to cool the planet. “Dimming the sun” (spraying sulfates into the air to reflect sunlight back into space) is actually one of those options. Another is “cloud brightening,” spraying saltwater to make clouds more reflective for the same reason, and there’s also “ocean fertilization,” encouraging algae blooms to soak up carbon.

Millionaire entrepreneur and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has called for putting massive mirrors in orbit to shield the planet from sunlight. And Bill Gates is officially funding the first high-altitude geoengineering tests. As CNBC reports, thousands of planes would spray millions of tons of particles into the air to replicate the effects of a massive volcanic eruption.

There’s some non-Bond villain rational behind this. Proponents of this specific kind of volcano-copying geoengineering, like the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, point to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. It blew 20 million tons of ash into the stratosphere, creating a cloud hundreds of miles wide and reflecting about 2 percent of sunlight hitting the Earth back into space. The next year, global temperatures dipped significantly. If we could recreate that in a controlled way, proponents argue, then we can save the ice at the poles and fight sea level rise.

The problem is it’s hard to do anything in a controlled way when we’re talking about endlessly complex natural systems. There’s already evidence volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo interfere with monsoons in Asia and Africa, completely throwing off the rain cycles that millions of people depend on for food and water. But we don’t know what else could develop as the geoengineering effects settle into atmospheric, oceanic, and ecological systems around the world. There’s even a chance that, with so many particles spread through the world, that we would lose blue skies forever to a hazy, shiny grey. It’s impossible to run traditional tests on any of these techniques because we don’t have multiple habitable planets to experiment on. And that says nothing of the fact that it doesn’t actually address the key cause of global warming, which is the build up of carbon. The world may not warm as rapidly, but the oceans would still absorb carbon and quickly acidify, resulting in mass die-offs like we see with the Great Barrier Reef.

According to reporter and climate activist Naomi Klein, the fact that geoengineering does not address the root causes of climate change is exactly its allure. In her 2012 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate, she writes that for a long time, scientists were unwilling to advocate for geoengineering because they worried it would seem more enticing than safer, surer ways to fight climate change:

As Klein explains, more scientists are accepting that geoengineering may be a necessary Plan B, but we haven’t actually tried Plan A yet—scaling back greenhouse gas emissions. Geoengineering may be particularly appealing to wealthy backers, but there’s something that’s broadly comforting about the idea. If we can innovate our way out of climate disaster, then we don’t have to worry about producing and consuming less, and we don’t have to dramatically reimagine our society, economy, and lives. And haven’t humans managed to conquer nature in the past, as we have with dikes, dams, and artificial islands? Klein writes that “succumbing to the logic of geoengineering does not require any change from us; it just requires that we keep doing what we have done for centuries, only much more so.” MORE

How geoengineering might work, according to Harvard

This alarmingly simple hack could let anyone tinker with the climate

The possibility poses troubling new questions about the ability to regulate the technology.

Several Harvard climate scientists are preparing to launch a balloon that will spray reflective particles into the atmosphere. The experiment is hugely controversial, reports James Temple.

The issue: Critics worry even just doing the experiments will lend scientific legitimacy to the idea that we could move the dial on Earth’s climate. They also fear the university is rushing ahead of the public and political debate on this topic.

Despite that: Harvard is going to announce a committee today which will oversee the tests, saying it will ensure they’re done in a transparent and safe way. They are due to start in about six months.

The potential: It could create a template for how geoengineering research is conducted going forward, and perhaps pave the way for more experiments to follow. Read the full story here.

To curb climate change, we have to suck carbon from the sky. But how?

Once considered a distraction, scientists now say using technology—and nature—to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is not only possible: It’s a must.

The long radish root creates deep channels in the soil that can make it easier for subsequent crops to reach water in the soil below.

At McCarty Family Farms, headquartered in sun-blasted northwest Kansas, fields rarely sit empty any more. In a drive to be more sustainable, the family dairy still grows corn, sorghum, and alfalfa, but now often sows the bare ground between harvests with wheat and daikon. The wheat gets fed to livestock. The radishes, with their penetrating roots, break up the hard-packed surface and then, instead of being harvested, are allowed to die and enrich the soil.

Like all plants, cereal grains and root vegetables feed on carbon dioxide. In 2017, according to a third-party audit, planting cover crops on land that once sat empty helped the McCarty farms in Kansas and Nebraska pull 6,922 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil across some 12,300 acres—as much as could have been stored by 7,300 acres of forest. Put another way: The farm soil had sucked up the emissions of more than 1,300 cars.

Moves like this are among a host of often overlooked steps that scientists now say are crucial to limiting the worst impacts of climate change. MORE