On the other hand, wouldn't it be a good idea to get locked in to some safe, cost-effective, environmentally and ethically acceptable socio-technical climate solutions; the sooner the better? Are we really going to make the risk of "lock-in" a negative in evaluating any potential action? Or just apply this bar to the actions we don't like to magnify the their risk profile relative to our favorites? Greg
>________________________________ > From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> >To: geoengineering <[email protected]> >Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2014 12:21 PM >Subject: [geo] Climate geoengineering: issues of path-dependence and >socio-technical lock-in - Cairns - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate >Change > > > >http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.296/abstract >Climate geoengineering: issues of path-dependence and socio-technical lock-in >Rose C. Cairns* >27 JUN 2014 >Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change >As academic and policy interest in climate geoengineering grows, the potential >irreversibility of technological developments in this domain has been raised >as a pressing concern. The literature on socio-technical lock-in and path >dependence is illuminating in helping to situate current concerns about >climate geoengineering and irreversibility in the context of academic >understandings of historical socio-technical development and persistence. This >literature provides a wealth of material illustrating the pervasiveness of >positive feedbacks of various types (from the discursive to the material) >leading to complex socio-technical entanglements which may resist change and >become inflexible even in the light of evidence of negative impacts. With >regard to climate geoengineering, there are concerns that geoengineering >technologies might contribute so-called ‘carbon lock-in’, or become >irreversibly ‘locked-in’ themselves. In particular, the scale of infrastructures that geoengineering interventions would require, and the issue of the so-called ‘termination effect’ have been discussed in these terms. Despite the emergent and somewhat ill-defined nature of the field, some authors also suggest that the extant framings of geoengineering in academic and policy literatures may already demonstrate features recognizable as forms of cognitive lock-in, likely to have profound implications for future developments in this area. While the concepts of path-dependence and lock-in are the subject of ongoing academic critique, by drawing analytical attention to these pervasive processes of positive feedback and entanglement, this literature is highly relevant to current debates around geoengineering. -- >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. > > > -- 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.
