http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2010/09/enmod_squad.single.html
SEPT. 23 2010 11:00 AM
ENMOD Squad
Could an obscure treaty protect developing countries from geoengineering
gone wrong?
By Bidisha Banerjee
This piece arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State
University, the New America Foundation, and Slate.
A Future Tense conference on geoengineering will be held at the New America
Foundation on Monday, Sept. 27. (For more information, please visit
the NAF Web site.) Read more of Slate's special issue on
geoengineering.Feed one set of assumptions into a climate model, and
filling the Earth's upper atmosphere with levitating nano-particles seems
like a reasonable way to rein in the worst effects of climate change. Feed
in other assumptions, and the Asian and African monsoons falter, wiping out
food and water security for 2 billion people. Of course, if climate change
continues unfettered, the monsoon, increasingly chaotic, may tip into
havoc, anyway—in Bangladesh, India, and other places that are especially
vulnerable to both climate change and the risks of geoengineering gone
wrong. Calculations like these have led an increasingly vocal group of
scientists and policymakers from wealthy nations to conclude that since
geoengineering the climate may at some point be necessary, we should start
tinkering now. The risks of geoengineering are outweighed by the risks of
doing nothing at all, they argue, especially in a world with no climate
treaty and the looming possibility of runaway global
warming.Advertisement"">Yet those who have the most to lose in either case
haven't had much of a say so far. Countries across the developing-world
spectrum—from small island states, some of which are already drowning, to
India and China, whose huge populations depend on existing weather
patterns—should be able to agree on one point, and soon: Geoengineering
must not go forward without a formal way to protect nations from—and
compensate them for—its potentially catastrophic results.Happily, a
serviceable (though dated) framework for policing climate intervention
exists—and its name is ENMOD. The Convention on the Prohibition of Military
or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques might be
better thought of as the Bond Villain Treaty. It deals with "deliberate
manipulation" of "the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth,
including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer
space." Each of its signatories agrees not to "engage in military or …
other hostile environmental modification" with "widespread, long-lasting,
or severe" consequences. The United States and 74 other countries consider
ENMOD "legally binding"—the magic words that have proven so elusive in the
climate negotiations. (China has yet to join.)
In the 32 years ENMOD has been around, it's never been used. Cases in which
legal scholars think the treaty could have been invoked but wasn't read
like the Book of Job channeled by Thomas Pynchon: In 1998, the Mexican army
targeted that well-known insurgent, the Mediterranean fruit fly, for
"phytosanitary" reasons; Zapatistas alleged that the army was trying
to wipe out the rebels' food crops. Also in the 1990s, the United States'
spookily named HAARP program created giant antennae that beam powerful
frequencies into the ionosphere. Russia alleges that these can induce not
justregionwide headaches and psychological distress but rupture oil and
natural gas pipelines. ENMOD, however, stayed silent on these—and all
other—occasions. Still, the group's power, at least in theory, is
considerable. In a detailed study, legal experts Susana Pimiento Chamorro
and Edward Hammond point to the "remarkably simple and direct" language
with which ENMOD commands its fact-finding committee to take complaints
straight to the U.N.'s most powerful agency, the Security Council—which has
lately shown signs of leaving its war footing and warming up to climate as
a security-related concern.Unfortunately, ENMOD is, at present, stuck in
the Cold War. Created in 1978, largely in response to U.S. cloud-seeding
efforts intended to worsen the Vietnamese monsoon, ENMOD's military
orientation is clear. But ENMOD is positively chirpy about "peaceful"
environmental modification. So geoengineering, which is being sold as an
altruistic research program, wouldn't fit the bill unless someone could
prove hostile intent. One worry, of course, is that climate change might
provide convenient cover for one country to wreck another's economy with
subtly directed geoengineering. ENMOD—if awakened—would cover those sorts
of transgressions already. But the treaty-makers need to learn two
post-Cold War lessons: Overt hostility is not the only cause of
environmental disaster, and even those with good intentions should clean up
after themselves.
Modify the treaty's "peaceful purposes" language to hold geoengineers or
their funders responsible for any damage they might do, and ENMOD's chirp
starts to sound more attuned to the dangers of our time. A beefed-up
version of the treaty would offer developing countries enough protection
against geoengineering gone wrong that they could begin the key
conversation—whether their shared values would permit geoengineering at
all. But many challenges would remain. For example, geoengineers in search
of grants could make a strong case that the new ENMOD would amount to a
blanket ban on their work, since no one would want to accept financial
liability for stopping the monsoon. Even if someone did agree to foot the
bill, it would be hard to collect fines, no matter how bad the calamity.
Observing and explaining large-scale climate trends is possible, but
specific attribution—showing that a certain drought in China was caused,
even in part, by sun-dimming sulfates peacefully lofted from Qatar—is
vanishingly difficult.The United Nations building
There is room for creativity here. An updated version of ENMOD could
require anyone funding a geoengineering project to post anenvironmental
assurance bond (PDF) big enough to pay for a reasonable-worst-case
catastrophe. ("Sulfate dust blows up the planet" wouldn't count, but
stopping the monsoon might.) The people issuing and applying for the bonds
might well have unique insights about potential risks, and if they were
forced to have skin in the game, they could feel some pressure to use
them. Policy wonks, of course, would want a treaty with much more: a
decision-making process that could bridge the gap between rich and poor
nations; a firm, yet fair, distinction between research and deployment;
mandatory implementation of yet-to-be-designed domestic laws that take
high-impact geoengineering out of the private sector; seats on a black-tie
cruise with Bill Gates to survey the results of
his cloud-brightening experiments; an ENMOD Squad that roamed the world
investigating geoengineering projects; and a live band playing soothing
remixes of the 007 theme at all treaty-related meetings.
But updating ENMOD's "peaceful purposes" language to require geoengineers
to have skin in the game is the core principle. When scientists,
businesses, or countries aren't put on the hook for the bad outcomes of
their actions, the injustices that result may never get sorted out—because
the responsibility wasn't clear in advance. An environmental assurance bond
would help make it clear. This time, the stakes are very high. No one,
especially in the developing world, should give the geoengineering
community a pass based merely on its good intentions, with which the road
to a dim and dusty planetary hell might be paved.Of course, since even an
ideal ENMOD probably wouldn't extend to coal plants and automobile exhaust
pipes, it would, in a sense, be unfair to geoengineers. The unintentional
climate-hackers who are warming the planet—all of us, though some of us
more than others—wouldn't be held responsible for the damage that we're
doing, but intentional geoengineers would be held responsible for any
problems caused by their attempts to correct it. Still, some responsibility
is better than none
Bidisha Banerjee is the San Francisco-based co-author of a forthcoming Yale
Climate and Energy Institute/Centre for International Governance Innovation
report on scenario planning for solar radiation management. She is
collaborating on a geoengineering game and has written about geoengineering
governance for Slate and the Stanford Journal of Law, Science, and Policy
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