This is a draft article I wrote for the African Academy of Sciences. I'd really appreciate any comments on it - before I irrecoverably embarrass myself!
Thanks A ----------- Governance of Geoengineering – A personal view Climate change is here to stay. That much is certain. Due to the heat capacity of the oceans, we always feel the effect of emissions past. Meanwhile, not only do emissions continue, but there’s still a breakneck rush to build carbon-spewing plant and vehicles. This is true not only in the developing world, but also in affluent countries that are switching back to fossil – such as Germany, which has turned against nuclear. So not only are we bracing ourselves for the climate change that’s already in the mail, we’re also wilfully accelerating the process. But it gets worse. As emissions are cleaned up in the developing world, the aerosol haze which mutes global warming will fade away – exposing us to the full glare of a changing climate. Furthermore, we are potentially exposed to major tipping points in the Earth’s climate system, such as the postulated release of methane in the Arctic. Even in the unlikely event that we manage to rapidly decarbonise the economy, we may still find find that any intervention is too little, too late. As a technology, geoengineering – and specifically solar radiation management - is also here to stay. We know we can do it. We know we can do it fairly cheaply - certainly much more cheaply than rapid, large-scale mitigation. We also know that it will work, albeit imperfectly, in reducing the impacts of climate change. So what to do with this terrifyingly powerful technology? We must bear in mind two facts. Firstly, we are still emitting. Secondly, even if we stop emitting there is at least a chance the climate is already in a dangerously unstable state. Faced with a position like that, it’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t at least explore geoengineering technology. And we’d be exploring for a very good reason: committing to NOT geoengineering is rapidly beginning to look like a very dangerous idea indeed. Beyond exploring, what could deployment actually look like? Well here’s the problem: the real world is a messy, dirty place. We live in a world which tolerates reckless emissions, and much more besides. Protectionism, warfare, human rights abuses, genocide. These are all ugly things that go on and the world tolerates them, to a greater or lesser extent. We don’t have an effective global governance policy for such things, although we do try sometimes. We have treaties, which are optional. We have resolutions, which are ignored. We have sanctions, which are ineffective. And we have bombs, which yield highly unpredictable outcomes, and are more effective as a threat than as an intervention. None of the above is terribly efficient at getting people or countries to behave themselves. So why do we pretend geoengineering will really be ‘governed’ by anything, or anyone? My argument is that it won’t be governed at all. Or at least, there isn’t any reason to assume that there will be a single, overall framework of governance that delivers an effective policy – regardless of whom that single, effective policy favours. Could we not image a world where a chaotic muddle of overlapping and competing geoengineering schemes exists? Take for example, a situation where a power bloc determines a policy of minimal intervention, but is overruled by a private carbon offset firm who offer to ‘top up’ the intervention. This seems superficially possible, if not necessarily plausible. Or perhaps a top up scheme could be provided by a nation state looking to preserve its glaciers? This top up could be provided in defiance of a state looking for a ‘light touch’ geoengineering scheme, which allows it to open up formerly ice-bound oil fields. That scenario certainly seems viable. Could we imagine a world where ‘smart’ geoengineering interventions straddle the line between weather modification and climate control? A world where city mayors try to control heatwaves, or steer hurricanes away from their shores? We could surely imagine that agricultural states would seek to manipulate rainstorms – as many already do. This technology doesn’t even have to work to be deployed. Like a modern-day raindance, anyone with a chequebook and a jet can try to control the weather. What hope, therefore, for governance? And should anyone care about the resulting mess? There seems to be an implicit assumption in many places that effective governance is ‘A Good Thing’. But most human activity is self-organising chaos. Broadly speaking, despite our collective inability to govern very much on an international level, the world still muddles through. Most people have enough food, they enjoy at least some access to international trade, and they usually don’t get killed in their beds at night by foreign armies. It’s for these reasons that the opposite attracts much hand-wringing and column inches. War, death and famine make the news precisely because they’re not the norm. Even in the poorer parts of the world, people get by. Things are, in many ways, just about OK. Is it not therefore possible, that we can have ‘OK’ geoengineering, without an effective governance regime? That the broadly headless system that puts food on our table and allows us to raise families without too much interference could also be relied upon to keep our climate stable? This isn’t a utopian vision. It’s not some avant-garde political nirvana. It’s just OK, just adequate. Just enough to function. And it’s basically what we have. Through all the messes we have, when human civilisation is considered in the round we are reasonably effective at managing things, without much of a system to do so. There is always a degree of pressure towards a broadly sensible norm in most fields, and the same is true of geoengineering. The truly rogue geoengineers will get shot down – perhaps literally, perhaps figuratively. The dithering laggards will be overtaken by the braver consensus. The rich and powerful will get their way a little too much, but not so much that the poor will start flinging nuclear bombs at them. We’ll geoengineer. And we won’t govern it very effectively. And it will basically be OK. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
