Hi. There cannot be a problem with either of the following SRM strategies, ethical or otherwise, and as a necessary addition to the equally essential transition to zero carbon technologies.
1. Ensuring all road and runway services are balanced pale and dark, so at least the amount of radiation reflected back from the paler surfaces is equal to the amount entrenched in the darker ones. 2. Spraying an area of ice and snow bereft rock equal to that lost in the last 50 years with chalk based solar reflective paint. The reason why there cannot be an ethical or other sort of problem with either of these strategies is that the first is a return to earlier SR normality, and the second is a replication of SR conditions as they used to be before the chaos got going. All that we need is a UN Climate Action Program to organize the spraying, payment from everyone wealthy enough to the GCF, and concomitant reforestation to provide the shade there used to be, and employing the poorest people because that's essential in order to get the work done, and the ethical cost of solving the climate problem. Rosemary Jones. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Friday, 24 January 2014 19:26:49 UTC-8, David Morrow wrote: > In an earlier thread, Ron had asked about ethicists' views on the > differences between CDR and SRM. I don't know of any detailed treatment of > the topic. I'd be grateful if anyone could point one out. For the reasons > I'll explain below, ethicists have focused most of their attention on SRM > or on specific methods of CDR, such as ocean fertilization. But I figured > I'd take a stab at articulating what I see as the main differences between > the ethics of CDR and the ethics of SRM. > > The following comments apply to SRM and CDR generally. Not all of the > comments apply to all SRM or CDR technologies. I'll say a bit about that at > the end. > > In general, SRM is much more ethically problematic than CDR. This is for > four main reasons, in descending order of importance: > > 1. SRM involves larger, more geographically dispersed risks than CDR does. > The magnitude of the risk matters because any decision to test or deploy > SRM is unlikely to be unanimous, and the ethical issues involved in > imposing risks on others increase with the magnitude of the risk. The > geographical scope of the risk matters because imposing risks across > borders raises questions of global political legitimacy that are not well > understood. That is, we know much more about how such decisions ought to be > settled within a country than across many countries. My sense is that some > key risks are less well understood for SRM, too, which makes it harder to > make good decisions. > > 2. CDR would (in principle) enable us to "clean up the mess we're making," > while SRM would pass the problem on to future generations while keeping its > worst effects at bay. Thus, SRM raises special concerns about > intergenerational justice that CDR might not. (If, however, current > generations built the infrastructure for CDR, pumped a lot of GHGs into the > atmosphere, and then left future generations to pay the costs of capturing > and sequestering the carbon, that would raise problems of intergenerational > justice.) > > 3. SRM represents a greater intervention into natural systems than CDR > does. A high-GHG world cooled by SRM is a much more heavily "managed" world > than one that in which warming has been slowed or reversed by CDR. Some > ethicists -- especially environmental philosophers -- think that > significant intervention in natural processes is "pro tanto wrong" > (roughly, "wrong to that extent"), meaning that being a significant > intervention is a "wrong-making feature" of an act. This is *not* to say > that all significant intervention is "wrong, all things considered." > Wrong-making features can often be offset by other features of the act. To > take a non-environmental example, many people would say that "being a lie" > is a wrong-making feature of an act, but that lying to save an innocent > person's life would be justified. To take an environmental example, > large-scale agriculture represents a very significant intervention into > natural systems, but it is justified (in some form) by the need to feed > large numbers of people. Since SRM is a more significant intervention than > (most forms of) CDR, it is ethically more problematic than (most forms of) > CDR. > > 4. SRM is more susceptible to charges of hubris than CDR is. Sometimes > this is expressed in terms of "playing God." Roughly, the idea is that > believing we can manage Earth's climate through SRM requires greater > confidence in our knowledge and technical abilities than does believing > that we can capture and sequester carbon. Thus, it's thought that someone > who claims that we can pull off SRM without bad side effects is more open > to charges of overestimating our abilities than is someone who merely > claims we can pull off CDR. > > > The main overlap between SRM and CDR, ethically speaking, concerns the > so-called "moral hazard" problem. This is the worry that developing SRM > and/or CDR will cause the world to cut back their mitigation efforts. Some > people think this is a bigger problem than others do, but I'd say it's at > least as big a problem for CDR as it is for SRM. There are some other > objections that apply to both SRM and CDR, but I don't think they're as > important as the issues above. > > > Finally, particular CDR technologies may share some of the ethical > problems of SRM. Ocean fertilization comes to mind as posing large, poorly > understood, and geographically dispersed risks. But the ethical problems > with, e.g., ocean fertilization have to do with the mechanism by which it > aims to capture and sequester carbon, not with the fact that it is a form > of CDR per se. > > > I hope the other ethicists lurking on the list will chime in on this > topic. I'm also interested to hear from everyone else on the list. I don't > think the ethics of CDR are all that well explored, so I expect we'll learn > some new things from the discussion. > > > David > -- 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.
