Benoit, the answer to your question “Why are you on this list with geoengineering” is because the withdrawn UNEA resolution in question explicitly included CDR as well as SRM. You might disagree with that lumping, I might disagree, Andrew might disagree, but lump they did…
From: carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com <carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Benoit Lambert Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2019 9:47 AM To: Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> Cc: geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com>; carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com <carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com> <carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: [CDR] Governing Geoengineering at the United Nations? Andrew, Thank you for the information. In most cases, geoengineering does not include CDR. Why are you on this list with geoengineering? It just does not qualify. Biogeotherapy is offering 10-15 CDR solutions that all beat geoengineering, on all criteria: agriculture soils of the word regain their carbon which makes them healthy which means food security, droughts and flood are avoided, chemical inputs and petroleum are down making farming profitable without subsidies, human health is gaining, carbon is being sequestered, etc… Biochar is avoiding organic waste emissions. Carbon from pyrolytic biomass can be used in numerous industries, including concrete as the price of sand goes up. Most of what I am referring to is proved, ready to be implemented. It really feels like geoengineering is being pushed down our throats. Sorry but... This is not about being radical ecologists or other smearing, it is about facts, efficientcy, social acceptability, economic realism. It is about urgent need for biosphere politic to solve urgent problems. This is about fantastic opportunities allowed thanks to new knowledge on the carbon cycle, new experiences of carbon farming, new carbon-based production. Opportunities we should embrace with enthusiasm and not get lost in what is mostly fantasies at this point. The future of this world is biology, biosphere intensification, and that is not against engineering. It is just new knowledge bringing new strategies. The revolution I am referring to has been called geotherapy. We now name it biogeotherapy. It includes the remediation of soils using rock-dust, the use of biochar in industrial processus, and, of course, carbon-farming to fight desertification: not-till ag. & cover crops, holistic grazing management, deep rooted new cereal as kernza, biochar, etc. It solves the carbon imbalance while building new prosperous carbon-based economies. Geoengineering deserves to be tested, but not to take central stage. What should be proposed to the UN, is a resolution to support broad biogeotherapy, and give credits to those sequestering excess carbon. It is safe, building organic wealth, making farmers prosperous, opening-up thousands of new industrial products with new jobs, all over the world. The question is: who can do better? At this stage, and from far, nobody! Le 14 mars 2019 à 04:09, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com<mailto:andrew.lock...@gmail.com>> a écrit : http://legal-planet.org/2019/03/13/governing-geoengineering-at-the-united-nations-no-at-least-not-now/ JESSE REYNOLDS<http://legal-planet.org/contributor/jreynolds/> March 13, 2019 Governing Geoengineering at the United Nations? No, at Least Not Now A proposed resolution falters at the UN Environment Assembly [UN Environment Assembly] At this week’s UN Environment Assembly<http://web.unep.org/environmentassembly/>, countries’ representatives debated a draft resolution regarding climate geoengineering. Unable to come to agreement, it was withdrawn Wednesday<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16151e.html>. This is not surprising to me, as — for the most part — leaders presently lack political incentives to take action. I am also not particularly disappointed, because a counter-productive resolution seemed fairly likely. As background: in the face of continued insufficient cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and others are considering large scale interventions in natural systems to prevent dangerous climate change. The proposed geoengineering methods vary but for the most part would either remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere<http://legal-planet.org/2018/10/01/a-major-challenge-for-avoiding-climate-change-hides-in-plain-sight/> or make the planet a bit more reflective<http://legal-planet.org/2018/10/15/another-possible-means-to-keep-global-warming-within-1-5-degrees-celsius/>. Some geoengineering methods have the potential to greatly reduce climate change but also pose physical risks and social challenges. Dedicated governance will eventually be warranted, and given the global stakes, some governance should be international. The Swiss government, with the support of ten diverse countries<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/02/26/swiss-push-talk-geoengineering-goes-sci-fi-reality/>, introduced<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00717-6> a draft resolution [PDF]<http://jreynolds.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019UNEAres.pdf> to the UN Environment Assembly, the governing body of UN Environment<https://www.unenvironment.org/> (formerly UNEP). It was modest, substantively only creating an expert committee to assess the proposed methods and existing governance. Yet in the week leading up to the Assembly proper, concerns and divisions quickly became apparent in the lead-up Committee of Permanent Representatives [1<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16144e.html>, 2<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16145e.html>, 3<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16148e.html>, 4<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16149e.html>]. Countries’ representatives proposed various amendments, leading to a heavily bracketed text that touched upon contested issues and crept into other institutions’ purviews. Resistance became strongest from the United States and Saudi Arabia, purportedly because the draft recognized the severity of climate change and referred to the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<http://legal-planet.org/2018/10/08/negative-emissions-technologies-in-the-new-report-on-limiting-global-warming/> (IPCC). Recognizing the stalemate, Switzerland withdrew its resolution. Why did such a modest proposal fail? After all, few informed observers assert that neither carbon dioxide removal (a.k.a. “negative emissions technologies”) nor solar geoengineering (a.k.a. “solar radiation management”) will be needed to stay within the Paris Agreements’s 2°C warming limit. And all agree that geoengineering eventually warrants some form of dedicated international governance. However, a better question is, why would countries — or more accurately, their representatives — expend their limited political capital to push through a resolution on a controversial topic? The answer is that countries generally do not have sufficient incentives to do so. Those who resist action to prevent climate change — like the US and Saudi Arabia — are unlikely to advocate for geoengineering because doing so would implicitly acknowledge the serious risks of anthropogenic climate climate<http://jreynolds.org/2017/11/02/politics-and-solar-geoengineering/>. Meanwhile, those who generally push for climate action must answer to constituents — often including “deep green” environmentalists — who tend to see geoengineering as a problematic distraction from emissions abatement. (For this reason, Switzerland, the other supporting countries, and others behind the resolution deserve praise for sticking their necks out on an important issue.) Furthermore, as issues, geoengineering and its governance have numerous aspects that seem counter-intuitive and contrary to current climate change and environmental politics. This produces steep learning curves, yet negotiators and other decision-makers have limited time. Cursory research quickly turns up multiple inaccurate, not precisely true, and genuinely false claims<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016EF000416>. What’s more, the only advocacy groups on the ground in Nairobi were those who oppose all geoengineering<http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2019/03/why-is-geoengineering-being-discussed-at-unea-how-should-civil-society-respond/>, and were actively spreading misleading, weakly supported assertions<http://legal-planet.org/2019/02/17/does-the-fossil-fuel-industry-support-geoengineering/>. Even if a decision-maker is convinced that some geoengineering methods could reduce climate change, she or he would presently gain nothing by pushing for their research and consideration. There are no active geoengineering research advocacy groups, and those environmental organizations that back it do so cautiously — and understandably so [1<https://www.edf.org/climate/our-position-geoengineering>, 2 [PDF]<https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2019/gw-position-Solar-Geoengineering-022019.pdf>, 3<https://www.nrdc.org/media/2015/150210>]. Until these circumstances change, decision-makers will generally lack incentives to take action. Ultimately, this week’s outcome is not bad. Given that geoengineering is complex and its discourse rife with inaccuracies, a productive outcome will require substantial time and effort. (Indeed, when the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity<https://www.cbd.int/climate/geoengineering/> hastily and prematurely considered the issue almost a decade ago, the result was a poorly worded and controversial decision.) Moreover, the original draft UNEA resolution had significant shortcomings<https://ceassessment.org/geoengineering-on-the-agenda-at-the-united-nations-environment-assembly/>. It jointly considered carbon dioxide removal<http://legal-planet.org/2018/10/31/negative-greenhouse-gas-emissions-the-national-academies-and-the-law/> and solar geoengineering<http://legal-planet.org/2018/11/06/solar-geoengineering-and-international-law/>, even though these two categories are more different than alike. Its preamble was one-sided, being “Deeply concerned about the potential global risks and adverse impacts of geoengineering on environment and sustainable development,” yet not recognizing some methods’ potentials to reduce climate change. International governance of geoengineering is important but not extremely time sensitive; better to wait a couple years to establish a knowledge base and shared understandings than to have an counterproductive resolution now. There is also an argument that the UN Environment Assembly may not be the right lead institution, at least not now. Although UN Environment has been instrumental in catalyzing important international environmental governance in the past, the IPCC’s mandate<http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/43/a43r053.htm>includes reviewing “possible response strategies to delay, limit or mitigate the impact of adverse climate change.” It thus seems essential. In fact, Switzerland’s representative “anticipated further discussions beyond UNEA on this issue.”<http://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb16151e.html> If the UN Environment Assembly were to take on geoengineering again in the future, the boundaries of its scope with those of the IPCC as well as of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change institutions would need to be first clarified. Regardless, geoengineering research and its governance will continue to move ahead, with our without action by the UN Environment Assembly or other international institutions. For example, a couple weeks ago, the US National Academies appointed its own committee to “develop a research agenda and recommend research governance approaches” for solar geoengineering, similar to what it has done for carbon dioxide removal. Likewise, on Monday, a team of researchers published important results from a high-resolution model that indicates that a moderate use of solar geoengineering might be able to reduce climate change for essentially the entire planet, with no regions becoming climatically worse off.Monday, a team of researchers published important results from a high-resolution<https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/faq-idealized-solar-geoengineering-moderates-key-climate-hazards> model that indicates that a moderate use of solar geoengineering might be able to reduce climate change for essentially the entire planet, with no regions becoming climatically worse off. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to carbondioxideremoval+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:carbondioxideremoval+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. 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