Here's a quick response to similar comments posted on my blog: Consumers and society at large have certainly benefited from the use of fossil fuels, no question about that. But in terms of direct benefits from unearthing and selling the stuff, a case can be made that the fossil fuel industry is the big winner. The industry also constitutes a bounded group of readily identifiable actors, which is important when figuring out who will pay in practice.
I agree that SRM and oil spill liability are not the same thing--a legal chain tying fossil fuel companies to SRM damages would be longer and more tenuous than a chain connecting an oil company to an oil spill. But even in the latter case it's not so straightforward: tanker owners are the immediately responsible parties under international law and bear primary liability for spills (the IOPC Funds form a second tier). I also assume that governments, not companies, will run any SRM deployment. Josh On Friday, February 14, 2014 4:51:19 AM UTC-5, andrewjlockley wrote: > > > http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/02/13/who-should-pay-for-solar-geoengineering-liability/ > > A question raised by the normally sensible Geoengineering Politics. They > come to an odd conclusion:any damages caused by SRM [Solar Radiation > Management, I believe - W] would essentially be the negative side effects > of a response measure intended to remediate harms caused by excessive > fossil fuel use, and fossil fuel companies have been the primary direct > beneficiaries of this activity, it stands to reason that they should be the > ones to pay for its cleanupand offer an analogy:This is precisely how the > international oil spill liability regime works–the International Oil > Pollution Compensation (IOPC) Funds, financed exclusively by oil companies, > have paid out more than $700 million in compensation since 1978Now there is > a problem with this analogy, or rather two. The first and most obvious is > that oil spills are caused directly by the oil companies, and dealing with > them is a cost of their operation (or they could tighten up their > procedures and spill less, which would also cost, but differently). You > could argue that paying for SRM is analogous to paying for oil spills, but > paying for getting it wrong is stretching things a bit. If some (company, > or govt) puts up mirror-satellites to reduce incoming solar, and > accidentally fries Australia, is that really the fault of those who put the > CO2 in the atmosphere? This is perhaps part of the fun that things like > geoengineering will inevitably lead to. After all, GW will have benefits as > well as costs, so sorting out whether those who would have benefited are > allowed to sue those who prevented that benefit would be fun.The second > problem is that spilling fuel is a consequence of extracting or > transporting oil, but not a necessary consequence. Thus its reasonable to > expect the companies to minimise it, and to fine (or otherwise force them > to pay up to clear up the mess) if they do spill. Whereas emitting CO2 > (most fossil fuel is inevitably going to get burned at some point in its > use cycle) is essentially a necessary consequence of extracting and selling > fuels.I’m also dubious about the assertion that in regard to excessive > fossil fuel use, … fossil fuel companies have been the primary direct > beneficiaries of this activity. As I said before, I think the primary > beneficiary has been the consumer of the fossil fuels, not the companies. > -- 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.
