Alvia, Thank you for your suggestion. In setting up an international regime, it is often a good idea to make the formal legal structure match as closely as possible the relevant de facto power structure. The UN Security Council has some of the states that are likely to be major actors with regard to CE, but it does not include others - Brazil, India, and Japan come instantly to mind. The rotating members broaden the base, but erratically. The Security Council vote weighting system is clearly very crude, and it may be poorly suited to many of the kinds of issues that might arise in managing CE; further, the Security Council is a busy place. Do they have the agenda space for an issue like CE? I think not. Finally, once something falls into the UN's purview, can it be safely insulated from encroachment by the General Assembly? If it could not be, CE might become subject to the same venal obstructionism that was so evident at Bali and Copenhagen.
I certainly do not claim to be an expert on UN procedures. Others, whose judgment I greatly respect, think that, despite the UN's patent defects, something useful might still be done under its aegis, or at least they believe that UN involvement is inevitable. These judgments may be right, but the above cited problems are major; therefore, if there is a way to avoid UN involvement, I suspect that doing so would offer a large up-side. That so astute and practiced a diplomat as Ambassador Benedick urges this course reinforces my belief in it. Best, Lee ________________________________ From: Alvia Gaskill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Mon 3/29/2010 12:43 PM To: Lane, Lee O.; Geoengineering; [email protected] Subject: Re: [geo] RE: Asilomar: Waiting for Pericles? And following along the lines set forth by the Ambassador, there is already an internationally constituted and accepted body for such decisionmaking. It is called the UN Security Council. It approves wars, sanctions against rogue nations (S. Africa during apartheid, N. Korea, Iraq, Iran, Serbia, etc.). The Security Council has a rotating membership that includes developing nations as well as permanent members with veto power, although its decisions are generally nearly unanimous. While imperfect, this process has facilitated our advance from the ruins of WWII in Europe and Asia, the Cold War and now the more complicated multi-player world of the 21st century. I'm not a big fan of the UN, but I see no need to reinvent the wheel, especially regarding a matter that would eventually wind up in their lap anyway. So for all those people hoping to make a career or a buck off "governance," I suggest you visit the big building in NYC first. ----- Original Message ----- From: Lane, Lee O. <mailto:[email protected]> To: Geoengineering <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 11:08 AM Subject: [geo] RE: Asilomar: Waiting for Pericles? Dear Group, Everyone, I think, owes Mike McCracken, Margaret Leinen, and their colleagues a debt of gratitude for the valuable meeting that they organized last week at Asilomar. I certainly learned a great deal both in the sessions and from the off-line conversations. The meeting clearly advanced the discussion of many of the key issues surrounding climate engineering (CE). As at all such expert gatherings, one heard some very insightful things, and, one also heard some things that were, well, perhaps not so insightful. In my view, proposals to subject CE experiments to some form of global-scale participatory democracy fall in the latter category. Versions of this idea were voiced at the conference and, even more stridently, by some outside it. Essentially, all these demands rest on the same logic. CE, were it to be tested, might affect climate everywhere. Climate impacts everyone; so everyone should have a voice. No one would trust most Third World governments to defend the interests of their citizens; thus some more direct means, it is claimed, must be found to assess the global general will. As a matter of practical reason, this line of thought is faulty. The proposed standard simply cannot be met. Since Rousseau, philosophers have been trying to identify the general will, often with untoward results, and this case is an especially daunting one. About 40 percent of the world's population, mostly those in very poor countries, has not even heard of climate change; thus, insisting on proof of global informed consent as a precondition for testing CE amounts to saying that CE can never be tested - doubtless the desired outcome for some, but not necessarily the one that best serves the interests of the people in whose names the demands are made. Further, governments of the industrialized states have concrete obligations to their own peoples. The US constitution enjoins our government to promote the general welfare, and the context is clearly a national one. A US official that allowed abstract notions of global informed consent to block action needed to protect Americans from harm would soon find himself out of a job - and rightly so. At the same time, Post WW II history also makes clear that Americans, all else being equal, prefer to achieve their own ends in ways that further those of other nations. Then too, growing global interdependence acts to reinforce US interest in the wealth, stability, and welfare in other nations. This trend impels other open societies in the same direction. In effect, global trade, linked markets, and mobile populations broaden the definition of enlightened national self-interest. This incentive for advanced states to take a broad view reinforces one of the more insightful things said at Asilomar. Ambassador Richard Benedick proposed that about fifteen major world powers should manage large CE tests - and perhaps eventually deployment. Managing CE will entail many choices, and, as knowledge grows, the system may need frequent fine tuning. Expectations and interests will differ by region, and bargaining costs may be high. With too many players, the process could easily grind to a halt. The major states, by virtue of their power to act alone on CE, automatically have a voice in decisions about its use, and the far flung nature of their interests ensures that many of them would pay heed to the risk of ill-effects - wherever they might occur. Limiting active control of CE to those states that already have the de facto power to affect outcomes would deprive the many Third World kleptocracies of the chance to hold up progress in hopes of exacting more bribes - one of the pathologies prominent in the current UN framework. To be sure, control by the major powers will likely be imperfect, but, then again, locking the world into a CE stalemate pending arrival of global-scale Periclean democracy seems to be an even less appealing option. Lee Lane ________________________________ From: [email protected] on behalf of Mike MacCracken Sent: Sun 3/28/2010 2:43 PM To: [email protected]; Geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] News from Asilomar? Here is the Conference statement that was issued to the media. There was considerable discussion and revision based on discussions on Friday morning, so this is said at the moment to be only from the Scientific Organizing Committee, but in going over the next to last draft, there were only a few suggestions for fixes and the SOC tried to incorporate them. This statement is now being circulated to attendees (some of whom had left before the final session and most before it was completed) offering the opportunity to indicate their support of the statement. That process will be going on for a week. Other materials from the conference are presently in draft form and there will be some review cycles on them to get them into better shape. In that there were a considerable number of media there, there should be stories appearing about the meeting this coming week. Best, Mike MacCracken On 3/28/10 10:34 AM, "Josh" <[email protected]> wrote: > Anyone have news from Asilomar for those of us who weren't able to > attend? > > Josh Horton -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
