> If I emit CO2 with the intent of changing climate versus the intent of
> driving to work, does that change anything relevant to compensation or
> attribution issues?
Forgive the long post, but it's actually a very complex question. Also, I'm
wearing my U.S. lawyer's hat (but this is a bread-and-butter law school
question, so maybe that's OK.)
Think of motorboats on a lake. Accept for the sake of argument that a boat's
engine leaks a certain, well-known amount of oil per mile traveled. One of the
social purposes of the lake is to allow recreation and enjoyment, including
boating, and so the release of oil incident to this socially encouraged
activity will probably be regulated indirectly, by (say) engine maintenence
requirements, limits on boating permits, a push to improve engine sealing
technology, payments to facilitate cleanup, etc. (We will hope for the sake of
the lake that its regulators do a much better job of this than human society
has done with GHGs.)
Now, if I took a cupful of oil down to the lake and dumped it in (perhaps
because I think that it will be beneficial for the lake's microbiome), a legal
regime might well treat that differently--even if I had a license to boat on
the lake which would, in effect, release that same amount of oil over a similar
period. True, most regimes would not try to look into your heart of hearts--if
you hate boating, but you're doing it, gritting your teeth, just to put oil in
the lake, you won't be regulated differently--but emission without the primary,
encouraged activity is not automatically the same thing.
So a society might well say that the side effects of permitted, beneficial,
protected, or necessary activities (and many carbon-emitting behaviors, for
better or worse, can be included on this continuum) should be regulated
differently than deliberate release. I think this is why the
maybe-don't-stop-burning-bunker-fuels-on-the-high-seas argument from a few
years ago (preserving sulfate release incident to an ordinary economic
activity) hasn't been nearly as controversial as proposed deliberate release of
sulfates. Again, not necessarily unreasonable. Incident side effects are
amenable to collateral regulation (and self-regulation) in ways that deliberate
activity may not be.
Some digressions:
I think I'm right to claim that, practically speaking, SRM would evolve
individual releases that were much larger on a per-event or per-actor basis
than ordinary incident release of sulfates, in addition to being different in
character (height, location, etc.) This would create further legal distinctions.
For another perspective, take the trolley problem (which I see that Andrew has
just mentioned). Forgive me for repeating my presentation at the Harvard Summer
School last year, but a legal system could reasonably punish a bystander who
diverted a train, killing one person but saving five. Why? Among other reasons,
the legal system might recognize the problems inherent in allowing or
encouraging bystanders to make on-the-spot calculations with people's lives,
even if there are potted hypotheticals where diverting the train seems like the
better outcome. Rule utilitarianism can reach this outcome as well.
Or take carbon credit markets: If I announce that I'm going to emit CO2 for no
reason, and then I offer to avoid doing so in exchange for carbon credits,
should I get them? (Of course, the ability to do this de facto without saying
you're doing it has been a big problem for carbon credit markets.)
To suggest that none of this should matter is (I think) to take a hard-line
consequentialist position that you might not want to apply in other contexts.
Also, if you like this kind of discussion, you'll love tort law. The inverse is
probably also true.
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Jamais Cascio <[email protected]>
wrote:
Level and intentionality of contribution is one component. Provable attribution
is another, which is also relevant to climate engineering: if Weather Disaster
X happens six months after the onset of SRM, how can it be proven that WDX was
(or was not) triggered by SRM?
It may be useful to look at the legal history of lawsuits brought against
tobacco companies for broadly parallel complexities.
-Jamais Cascio
On Aug 12, 2014, at 11:24 AM, Ken Caldeira <[email protected]>
wrote:
How and why do the challenges of compensation for solar geoengineering damage
fundamentally differ from the challenges associated with compensation for
damages associated greenhouse gas or tropospheric aerosol emissions that are
byproducts of industrial activity?
The main differences that I see is that inadvertent climate change likely
involves more actors (i.e., solar geoengineering will probably be limited to
state actors) and inadvertent climate change is caused knowingly but not
intentionally.
Does the issue of compensation fundamentally differ depending on whether the
climate change was caused intentionally versus merely knowingly?
(By the way, paper is behind a paywall that Stanford libraries does not tunnel
through, so I am operating solely on the basis of the text below.)
_______________
Ken Caldeira
Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 [email protected]
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira
Assistant: Dawn Ross <[email protected]>
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
wrote:
Ethics, Policy & Environment
Volume 17, Issue 2, 2014
Response to Svoboda and Irvine
Full access
DOI:10.1080/21550085.2014.926080 Jesse Reynolds
Published online: 08 Aug 2014
In this issue, Svoboda and Irvine (Svoboda & Irvine, 20146. Svoboda,
T., & Irvine, P. (2014). Ethical and technical challenges in
compensating for harm due to solar radiation management
geoengineering. Ethics, Policy and Environment, 17(2), 157-174.
[Taylor & Francis Online]
View all references) offer the most in-depth consideration thus far of
possible compensation for harm from solar radiation management (SRM)
geoengineering. This topic is indeed treacherous terrain, pulling
together multiple complex debates, ethical and otherwise. Their
description of the technical challenges to determining damages and
causation in particular are illuminating. The reader cannot help,
though, but be left with the sense that both SRM and compensation are
futile efforts, bound to do more harm than good.
Before proceeding, throughout any consideration of geoengineering, one
must always bear in mind that it is under consideration as a possible
complementary response (along with greenhouse gas emissions
reductions--or 'mitigation'--and adaptation) to climate change. Climate
change poses risks to the environment and humans, among whom the
world's poor are the most vulnerable. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change recently concluded that 'Models consistently suggest
that SRM would generally reduce climate differences compared to a
world with elevated greenhouse gas concentrations and no SRM ...'
(Boucher et al., 20133. Boucher, O., Randall, D., Artaxo, D.,
Bretherton, C., Feingold, G., Forster, P., ... Zhang, X. Y. (2013).
Clouds and aerosols. In T. F.Stocker, D.Qin, G. -K.Plattner, M.Tignor,
S. K.Allen, J.Boschung... P. M. Midgley (Eds.), Climate change 2013: The
physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(pp. 571-657). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
View all references, p. 575). Therefore, SRM has the potential to
reduce harm to the environment and humans, particularly to already
disadvantaged groups. However, SRM is imperfect.
The primary problem with S&I's analysis is that they treat the
shortcomings of SRM and of compensation for its potential negative
secondary effects as if they were sui generis. In fact, these cited
shortcomings are found among three existing policy domains, which
happen to intersect at the proposed compensation for SRM's harms. The
first such policy domain is socially organized responses to other
complex problems, and the provision of public goods in particular. In
a key passage, S&I write that 'The potential for SRM deployment to
result in an unequal distribution of harm and benefit among persons
raises a serious ethical challenge. It seems deeply unfair to adopt a
climate change strategy that benefits some at the expense of harming
others. This is especially the case if those harmed bear little or no
responsibility for the problem of anthropogenic climate change' (pp.
160-161). One could replace the phrases 'SRM deployment' and 'a
climate change strategy' (and skip the final specific sentence, for
now) with references to almost any socially organized response to a
complex problem, and the statement would remain valid. Indeed, the
primary function of government is arguably to levy taxes in order to
provide public goods, which are unlikely to be otherwise adequately
provided. These public goods include (but are not limited to) defense
from external threats, police protection to reduce crime, construction
of infrastructure, regulation for safety and environmental protection,
generation of knowledge through research, and standards setting. In
each of these cases, some people benefit more than others, and some
pay more than others. Some may be net losers. Policies in which no one
is a net loser (i.e., Pareto improving) are sometimes possible, but
most often are not or are not pursued. Instead, policies that generate
positive total net benefits are adopted. To compensate net losers,
side payments can be made and/or other issues can be linked. While
these arrangements could be called ethically problematic, they
constitute the very core of public policy. In fact, several of S&I's
ethical concerns--including raising revenue from those opposed to
and/or harmed by a policy, arbitrary rules, and the non-identity
problem--could be posed regarding these public goods' provision. SRM
might be especially complex, in large part because of its global
nature, but that does not make it entirely novel. Other global public
goods are promoted through various international mechanisms (Barrett,
20071. Barrett, S. (2007). Why cooperate? The incentive to supply
global public goods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
View all references).
The second policy domain posing similar ethical problems is
compensation, particularly in complex situations. Even in a case as
simple as accident liability with a single injurer and a single
victim, compensation for non-economic and irreparable damages is
unclear, and compensation clearly does not grant license for an
injurer to harm the victim. In a more complex example, such as the
requested compensation by those born with birth defects due to their
mothers' use of thalidomide during pregnancy, is it very uncertain who
should pay and how much compensation should be provided.
The third existing policy domain is climate change. In the key passage
cited above, 'SRM deployment' could be replaced with 'mitigation,'
'adaptation,' and/or 'compensation for climate change damages' and the
statement would remain valid. Any climate policy will 'result in an
unequal distribution of harm and benefit among persons,' and under all
feasible policies, those who 'bear little or no responsibility for the
problem of anthropogenic climate change' will experience some harm.
Specifically, aggressive mitigation would be expensive and, though it
offers some co-benefits, it would hinder economic development,
including in poor countries.1
1 Developing countries account for the majority of current greenhouse
gases emissions and the large majority of projected future emissions.
Fossil fuel combustion remains essential to economic development.
Aggressive mitigation would reduce fossil fuel combustion, hindering
economic development in poor countries.View all notes
The cause of the 'ethical uncertainty' is not SRM but climate change
and greenhouse gas emissions, whose ethics is discussed thoroughly in
the literature. Because of this, no responses to climate change will
be impervious to accusations of being unjust. However, S&I's implicit
ethical divorce of SRM from climate change has the effect of laying
the ethical challenges from climate change at the feet of SRM.
An additional problematic aspect of S&I is that, to some degree, they
stack the deck against SRM. Regarding its benefits, they fail to
emphasize that SRM appears to hold the potential to greatly reduce
climate change risks to the environment and people, particularly to
the world's poor. Regarding SRM's costs, they cite four ways in which
some might be harmed, each of which is likely to be less severe than
they imply. First, SRM would compensate for temperate and
precipitation changes unevenly. Yet almost all modeling of SRM's
probable effects are not optimized but instead use a determined SRM
intensity or one that would return global average temperature to a
preindustrial value. Citing them as indicating certain likely harms
would require that significantly suboptimal SRM policies be adopted.
The one model that does balance temperature and precipitation across
regions of the globe found that population-weighted Pareto optimal,
globally uniform SRM could compensate for 93% of temperature changes
and 56% of precipitation changes (Moreno-Cruz, Ricke, & Keith, 20124.
Moreno-Cruz, J. B., Ricke, K. L., & Keith, D. W. (2012). A simple
model to account for regional inequalities in the effectiveness of
solar radiation management. Climatic Change, 110(3), 649-668.
[CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
View all references, p. 660). Second, S&I point to ocean
acidification, but this is not caused by SRM but instead by elevated
atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is simply unaddressed by SRM. Third,
they note possible damage to stratospheric ozone. However, this would
be caused by only one proposed SRM technique (stratospheric aerosol
injection) using one proposed material (sulfate aerosols); other
methods and materials are possible. Furthermore, recent research
indicates that this impact would be small and the harmful consequences
(increased ultraviolet radiation) would be almost entirely offset by
the screening of incoming light by the aerosols (Pitari et al., 20145.
Pitari, G., Aquila, V., Kravitz, B., Robock, A., Watanabe, S., Cionni,
I., ... Tilmes, S. (2014). Stratospheric ozone response to sulfate
geoengineering: Results from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison
Project (GeoMIP). Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres,
119(5), 2629-2653.
[CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
View all references). Fourth, if SRM were to suddenly stop, then the
subsequent rapid climate change would be very harmful. But it is not
only SRM which poses risks if not implemented properly. For example,
society could intend optimal mitigation and adaptation yet fail to
implement them, resulting in dangerous climate change. In fact,
contemporary society maintains numerous complex operations whose
cessation would result in harm. For example, the well being of almost
all people relies upon continued global trade powered by fossil fuels,
yet we generally do not worry about a sudden cessation of trade and
fossil fuel extraction. Lastly, even if SRM were to stop, the benefits
might still outweigh the costs (Bickel & Agrawal, 20132. Bickel, J.
E., & Agrawal, S. (2013). Reexamining the economics of aerosol
geoengineering. Climatic Change, 119(3-4), 993-1006.
[CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
View all references). Nevertheless, the authors emphasize that SRM
'could result in substantial harm' (p. 160). This is true in that SRM
would pose risks, but S&I emphasize only the misses while downplaying
the hits.
Both SRM and the compensation for its negative secondary effects are
ethically complex. Yet such 'ethical uncertainty' generally neither
raises questions of ethical permissibility and nor induces paralysis
among policy makers in other domains such as the provision of public
goods, compensation, and mitigation and adaptation in response to
climate change. SRM is indeed complex and challenging but S&I fail to
indicate why its case should be fundamentally different from these
others. A more pragmatic approach, which asks what policies and
avenues of research would be most likely to offer the greatest
benefits, as opposed to one which seeks only what is problematic, may
be more productive.
Notes
1 Developing countries account for the majority of current greenhouse
gases emissions and the large majority of projected future emissions.
Fossil fuel combustion remains essential to economic development.
Aggressive mitigation would reduce fossil fuel combustion, hindering
economic development in poor countries.
References
1. Barrett, S. (2007). Why cooperate? The incentive to supply global
public goods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Bickel, J. E., & Agrawal, S. (2013). Reexamining the economics of
aerosol geoengineering. Climatic Change, 119(3-4), 993-1006.
[CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
3. Boucher, O., Randall, D., Artaxo, D., Bretherton, C., Feingold, G.,
Forster, P., ... Zhang, X. Y. (2013). Clouds and aerosols. In T.
F.Stocker, D.Qin, G. -K.Plattner, M.Tignor, S. K.Allen, J.Boschung... P.
M. Midgley (Eds.), Climate change 2013: The physical science basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (pp. 571-657). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
4. Moreno-Cruz, J. B., Ricke, K. L., & Keith, D. W. (2012). A simple
model to account for regional inequalities in the effectiveness of
solar radiation management. Climatic Change, 110(3), 649-668.
[CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
5. Pitari, G., Aquila, V., Kravitz, B., Robock, A., Watanabe, S.,
Cionni, I., ... Tilmes, S. (2014). Stratospheric ozone response to
sulfate geoengineering: Results from the Geoengineering Model
Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). Journal of Geophysical Research:
Atmospheres, 119(5), 2629-2653. [CrossRef], [Web of Science (R)]
6. Svoboda, T., & Irvine, P. (2014). Ethical and technical challenges
in compensating for harm due to solar radiation management
geoengineering. Ethics, Policy and Environment, 17(2), 157-174.
[Taylor & Francis Online]
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