http://issues.org/34-1/perspective-character-and-religion-in-climate-engineering/
Perspective: Character and Religion in Climate Engineering by Forrest Clingerman <http://issues.org/byline/forrest-clingerman>, Kevin J. O'Brien <http://issues.org/byline/kevin-j-obrien>, Thomas P. Ackerman <http://issues.org/byline/thomas-p-ackerman> Leave a reply <http://issues.org/34-1/perspective-character-and-religion-in-climate-engineering/#respond> Expanding the ethical discussion of marine cloud brightening. A group of scientists at the University of Washington has proposed a field test of marine cloud brightening <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000601/full>, during which saltwater would be sprayed into the air in an extremely fine mist. The goal is to determine whether it is possible to increase the reflectivity of nearby, low-level ocean clouds and thereby reduce global warming by reflecting more incoming solar energy. Such a test seems benign—after all, it uses only “natural” materials (saltwater, wind, clouds) to encourage a change in cloud reflectivity. Whether this test succeeds or not, it will offer data about how the climate system works, and so it will contribute to the effort of understanding, and perhaps reducing, the harms caused by the emissions of fossil fuel combustion and industrial agriculture. Yet even a small-scale field test of climate engineering raises complicated questions of morality and governance. The Spring 2017 *Issues in Science and Technology* <http://issues.org/toc/33-3/> discussed many such questions and their complexities. Here we seek to point out a useful but often-neglected conversation partner that can aid these discussions: religion. Religious traditions offer concepts and vocabularies for addressing ethics and policy. Religion is formatively influential for a majority of the world’s population, but is too often ignored in discussions of the social dimensions of climate engineering <https://thebulletin.org/2014/may/playing-god-why-religion-belongs-climate-engineering-debate7133>. Though we are not suggesting that all ethics and policy must “be religious,” we do argue that everyone (believers and nonbelievers alike) can profit from analyzing the distinctive moral and political ideas emerging from religious traditions and worldviews. In particular, we hold that religion is important to broaden the conversation to include the moral issue of character. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
