Just a personal opinion, but one that's been brewing for a while. I am definitely NOT writing this in my capacity as list moderator!
I'm concerned that governance and social policy research is not always entirely what it seems. My suspicion is that it's potentially a delaying tactic. This work is advocated by funders and politicians to avoid grasping the nettle of seemingly-odious experimentation. I'm not saying that anyone who works in the field is acting in bad faith, but there's a risk that social/governance work is supported because there's a need to 'do something' about geoengineering, but not actually to do anything that would possibly upset anyone. The risk is that such lily-livered prevarication stops us learning crucial lessons about the science - lessons which would help us better answer the governance questions (which we delay the science in order to seek answers to). To make genuine, effective policy decisions, we need accurate information about the science and engineering. Governance research in a 'fact-vacuum' achieves little. Governance decision-making without the friction of urgency lacks realism. The problem with the 'governance first' approach is that it leads to bad, ill-informed governance - 'govern-nonsense'. To do good governance, we need a 'science first' approach, which strives to provide complete and accurate information to policy makers. This simply can't be done dependably without experimentation. With the exception of some small ocean iron fertilisation trials, there have been no officially-sanctioned outdoor experiments on geoengineering. As a result, we have wasted years of progress into deployment technology, aerosol physics etc. The problem with the current timidity is two-fold. Firstly, we don't have full factual information about the technologies. Secondly, we have an artificial sense that decisions about deployment are far into the future. As a result, we don't have the heated and crucial discussions about deployment, which are actually what governance IS. Both of these elements are the true feedstock of a proper governance process, and both are held up by a lack of experimentation and technological development - which is in turn held up by the very governance research which is ostensibly aiming to assist the process. It's like an evil chicken and egg scenario. There seems to be both an explicit and implicit view that more 'governance' is needed before any 'offensive' outdoor research can be done. This can be interpreted as governance of the research agenda, and of eventual deployment. But the result is still the same - we delay and delay, whilst sailing closer and closer towards the waterfall. My personal view is that we are wasting valuable time. We need to sweep aside the social policy work and get on with the science, without obsessively worrying about the consequences. Do we delay physics at CERN, because someone may in future develop a Higgs-field death ray? No. Do we insist on social policy research before developing Google Glass? No. There are many other fields where governance is equally 'required' as it is in geoengineering - and it is absent. We are not being asked to research governance in these fields because people do not fear research on them. Governance is still required, but it is not conducted at present, because there is nothing anyone wishes to delay. We must recognise and resist what is happening. When we're implored to delay science to research or establish governance, we need to ask a simple question: 'is the benefit of delay worth the risks of delay'. We could wait another 5 years before doing the first test flights, or launching the first ships. We would have a lot more papers on governance, and yet we would really be no further along in the governance process. We'd have another 5 years of climate change under our belts, with all the effects, both reversible and irreversible, that go with it. I think the true governance work has a clear start date. It's when we have a shiny aerosol plane sitting on the runway, full tested and ready to deploy - with its performance well studied. Only when the engineering team asks the question 'Do you want us to fly this thing tomorrow, in ten years, or never?' will governance discussions start with the information and urgency needed to do the job properly. Anyth such discussion beforehand is just govern-nonsense. Any comments? A -- 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.
