"SRM would require 500-1000 year deployments of
technologies that future generations might consider anathema."
So you have no faith in CDR? Did you just make up the 500-1000 yr time
frame? If you want to assume we have to wait until the CO2 and other GHG
levels return to pre-industrial on their own, then you'll have to wait a lot
longer than a thousand years. The more reasonable assumption about SRM,
whatever form it takes is that it would probably need to be used until the
end of this century. By then, energy sources to regenerate sorbents will be
available, after the needs to supply the grid have been satisfied. As the
CO2 level in the atmosphere is gradually lowered, the intensity of the SRM
application is also reduced. I don't think lawsuits from the unborn are our
greatest worry. It's those people who keep meeting every few months
promising, but never delivering on emissions cuts or money to pay for it.
BTW, these are the same people who would fast track the methane reduction
fantasy that some have fallen prey to of late. So don't blame AEI for
binary thinking. It's others who have defined the choices.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wil Burns" <[email protected]>
To: "geoengineering" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 1:47
Subject: [geo] Re: New law review symposium issue on geoengineering
Hi Michael,
Thanks for responding again. A few more thoughts above.
On May 11, 10:47 am, Michael Hayes <[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you for the response.
As to 1); The principal aspects of SRM, in that they are
both technologically simple and cheap, makes the assumption of "failure"
seem unrealistic. The brakes system in my car is simple and cheap and so I
maintain it so as to not kill myself and others. If a deployed SRM effort
is
shielding a future generation from outright general destruction,
maintaining
and even improving the system should be expected of future generations.
The
core understanding, by most knowledgeable people in this area, is that
global SRM should not be deployed until climate change becomes a direct
threat to the balance of humanity. It is an emergency response. However,
waiting for the emergency to happen before developing the means to respond
is not rational. Also, there is a large difference between surface SRM
efforts and that of stratospheric injection. Lumping them together is a
novice's mistake.
* Somehow I think we know a lot more about the brake systems of cars,
borne out by 100 years of experience, than the effectiveness of SRM
technologies. Beyond the fact that a number of experts have
acknowledged potential diminution of effectiveness (and yes, including
feedback mechanisms) or downright failure, this issue can't be
blithely dismissed. Plus, I think you miss the larger issue, which is
the fact that a future generation might wish to no longer be under the
yoke of SRM given potentially very negative impacts (e.g. impacts on
monsoons or ozone depletion), yet it would be compelled to do so
because of termination effects that far exceed business as usual
warming impacts (that's why your argument below, that we're already
geoengineering the climate via our current policies is not entirely
compelling from my perspective). The point is that intergenerational
equity requires us to provide future generations with free choices in
terms of policymaking. SRM would require 500-1000 year deployments of
technologies that future generations might consider anathema.
The notion of un-known/hypothetical feedbacks denuding SRM efforts is
interesting. In that, it is injecting a double-false conditional into the
debate. This is more of a media tool than a scientific one.
As to 2); We are currently doing just that! The technology which is
currently "visiting great harm on certain vulnerable populations" is the
use
of fossil fuels. The sudden stoppage of that technology would have a grave
"termination effect". SRM will be needed in providing an
important transitional phase to greener energy. FF are far worse than SRM!
* Not true, see analysis above. And, again, that's an infirm argument
from an ethical perspective. It's an argument that gives succor to the
likes of the American Enterprise Institute, who has embraced
geoengineering, arguing that our choices are binary: a future ravaged
by climatic effects from unstinted initiatives or the magic bullet of
geoengineering. There is a third way, which is substantive reductions
in emissions, using both short-term stop gap measures, e.g. a focus on
reducing black carbon, and policies designed to effectuate a longer
term structural decarbonization of the world economy; see McKinsey and
Tellus's analyses in recent years for a highly cost-effect vision of
the way forward. However, the siren song of geoengineering provides
cover for entrenched fossil fuel interests to resist such policy
prescriptions; we shouldn't permit this to happen.
As to 3) I believe reductionism is important if I am dealing with a
concept
which has a philosophical underpinning requiring the totality of humanity
being divided into discrete segments of time.Reductionism can only be
rationalized through reductionism. The premise that generations are
separate
entities is false. Humanity is a constantly evolving or devolving
phenomena.
There is no fundamental time separations within the concept of humanity.
One
"time group" having ethical responsibilities to another "time group" is a
double-false argument if applied to the concept of humanity as a whole.
* I'm sorry, I don't accept this analysis. The simple truth is that my
child, and her children, will live a discrete existence from me after
my passing, and it's incumbent upon this generation to both leave the
Earth in a condition that can support their existence in a comparable
fashion to that left by my predecessors, and which does not lock them
into policy prescriptions that they might deem undesirable.
With all due respects to your effort on this subject and I do want to make
it clear that this is not meant to be a personal insult. But, I can only
conclude that the field of intergenerational ethics is (at this time), by
definition, an ill-logical and purely subjective belief system of thought.
I do believe such belief systems are largely viewed as "religion"
or..."media hype".
* This casting of intergenerational equity as a "religion" or "media
hype" smacks of the same kind of rhetoric used by climate skeptics,
though I fully acknowledge that principles of ethics and morality and
religion obviously have a common heritage. As far as an atheist such
as myself can embrace the tenets of a religion that recognizes the
rights and interests of future generation, then I guess I found
religion! wil
Michael
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