or as Woody Allen said
" The lion shall lie down with the lamb --but the lamb wont get much sleep"
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 9:00 PM
Subject: [clim] RE: [geo] RE: Asilomar: UN Security Council
Of course, the lion shall lie down with the lamb -- but historically,
in the exhibits showing this, the lamb must often be replaced.
Gregory Benford
-----Original Message-----
From: Lane, Lee O. <[email protected]>
To: Alvia Gaskill <[email protected]>; Geoengineering
<[email protected]>; [email protected]
Sent: Tue, Mar 30, 2010 5:41 am
Subject: RE: [geo] RE: Asilomar: UN Security Council
Alvia,You are, in my view, entirely correct in your skepticism about
fears of unilateral climate engineering. If one looks at such options
more closely, all sorts of possible barriers begin to appear. I am at
work on two publications that will explore the reasoning behind this
more sanguine view of the world politics of CE.As to the Security
Council, if a state wanted to appeal to that body in order to halt a CE
effort, it could do so. Assuming that the state initiating the CE was a
Council member, or was a client state of one, when push came to shove,
that member would have a veto option; so I am not sure why anybody
thinks that the Security Council offers much of a restraint. The more
basic point is that international regimes like the Council are not
quasi-governments designed to thwart the plans of the great powers;
rather, they are created by those powers as structures within which
they can bargain with each other. An efficient structure would include
all the states with power over the actions in question; the voting
rules would reflect the extant distribution of power, and members would
have incentives to practice straight dealing. That the lion shall lie
down with the lamb or the meek inherit the Earth are neither likely
results nor even agenda items – although there may be reasons to list
them as such for appearances sake. Lee
From: Alvia Gaskill [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Mon 3/29/2010 6:42 PM
To: Lane, Lee O.; Geoengineering; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [geo] RE: Asilomar: Waiting for Pericles?
Or, alternatively, having the Security Council approve of the actions
of the committee/commission. The venal obstructionism (and you left
out about 50 other meetings at the various COP-outs) would be less
likely since the climate engineering would not require hard decisions
about economics for the affected parties. One of my reasons for coming
back to the UN is that so many of the geo-haters like to bring up the
unilateral/war scenarios that are so unlikely for a variety of
reasons. If another nation or NGO wanted to complain about the use of
climate engineering, the Security Council would be the final
authority. If there is time for sanctions for Serbia, there is time
for something this important, if it should ever come up in the first
place.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lane, Lee O.
To: Alvia Gaskill ; Geoengineering ;
[email protected]
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 3:11 PM
Subject: RE: [geo] RE: Asilomar: Waiting for Pericles?
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.
To: Geoengineering
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.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Climate Intervention" 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/climateintervention?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.
