GiveWell, a New York-based non-profit "dedicated to finding outstanding [philanthropic] opportunities" recently took a look at responses to "potential global catastrophic risks." They list geoengineering research and governance as an area especially worthy of funding.
The excerpt below comes from a recent update post at http://blog.givewell.org/2014/06/26/potential-global-catastrophic-risk-focus-areas/ *Geoengineering research and governance* We see a twofold case for the importance of work on geoengineering research and governance: - Climate change could turn out to be much worse than anticipated <http://www.givewell.org/shallow/climate-change/extreme-risks>, and solar geoengineering could potentially offer a cheap (in purely financial, not necessarily cost-benefit, terms) and fast-acting response if it does <http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes/geoengineering#Whatistheproblem>. Further research to determine the viability of solar geoengineering could accordingly be quite valuable <http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes/geoengineering#Openquestions>. However, our understanding is that geoengineering, should it work, would be a distant second best to a policy of cutting emissions now, and some people have argued that research on geoengineering could undermine current efforts to reduce emissions, making further research *potentially* harmful. - The incentives of different countries to adopt solar geoengineering could differ dramatically, and it might be cheap enough for even small countries to do unilaterally, potentially leading to conflict <http://files.givewell.org/files/conversations/Klaus%20Keller,%20April%2018,%202013%20(public).pdf>. Questions about whether and how solar geoengineering could be governed are accordingly increasingly salient. Although solar geoengineering is in the news periodically, research on the science or governance appears to receive relatively little dedicated funding <http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes/geoengineering#Whoelseisworkingonthis>: our rough survey found about $10 million/year in identifiable support from around the world (mostly from government sources), and we are not aware of any institutional philanthropic commitment in the area (though Bill Gates personally supports some research in the area). Our conversations <http://www.givewell.org/conversations#ClimateChange> have led us to believe that there is significant scientific interest in conducting geoengineering research and that funding is an obstacle, but, as with biosecurity, we do not have a very detailed sense of what we might fund. We’re wary of the concern that further geoengineering research could conceptually undermine support for emissions reductions, but we regard it as relatively unlikely, and also find it plausible that further research could contribute significantly to governance efforts <http://files.givewell.org/files/labs/climate%20change/Bentley%20Allan%203-25-14.pdf> . We expect to address the question of what a philanthropist could support in this area with a deeper investigation and a declared interest in funding <http://blog.givewell.org/2014/05/14/the-importance-of-committing-to-causes/>. Note that we don’t envision ourselves as trying to *encourage* geoengineering, but rather as trying to gain better information and governance structures for it, which could make the actual use more *or* less likely (and given the high potential risks of both climate change and geoengineering, we could imagine that shifting the probabilities in either direction – depending on what comes of more exploratory work – could do great good). -- 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/d/optout.
