Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen *Speakers* - *Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice* by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) - *An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns* by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) - *Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R?* by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) - *Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? *by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) *Session Description* Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): *For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750).* That is, I believe there is general agreement that afforestation/reforestation can be a valuable CDR approach, even though it is certainly not permanent. I claim the same about biochar, with a major portion likely to last for millennia. My concern might extend to Dr. Wong, but certainly to Drs. Vaughan and Lenton. Permanence should never be a requirement for any form of either SRM or CDR. So this is to urge list members to read the Wong paper for the (limited) way that CDR stays in his discussion. 4. Dr. Svoboda yesterday directed our attention in his last sentence to a 2012 (behind pay-wall) article, whose abstract reads (emphasis added): *As a strategy for responding to climate change, aerosol geoengineering (AG) carries various risks, thus raising ethical concerns regarding its potential deployment. I examine three ethical arguments that AG ought not to be deployed, given that it (1) risks harming persons, (2) would harm persons, and (3) would be more harmful to persons than some other available strategy. I show that these arguments are not successful. Instead, I defend a fourth argument: in scenarios in which all available climate change strategies would result in net harm, we ought to adopt the strategy that would result in the least net harm. Barring substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, we can reasonably expect future scenarios in which all available strategies would result in net harm. In such cases, there is good reason to suspect that AG would result in less net harm than emissions mitigation, adaptation, or other geoengineering strategies.* with this key words in the middle (emphasis added): *scenarios ... all ... strategies ...net harm* I strongly believe that afforestation/reforestation, biochar and probably several other CDR approaches will result in net good, not net harm. I hope someone can show me why this is not true. If true, then it should follow that Dr. Svoboda's final sentence is not logically valid. I hope
RE: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Toby, I regret I will not be at the meeting to learn more about the ethics of CDR. Presumably this refers to enhancement of existing, natural CDR which is already removing about 55% of our emissions, but which is immune from ethical considerations(?) Regardless of our actions, this natural CDR will eventually consume all of our CO2 and return air CO2 (and climate?) to pre-industrial levels, so what are the ethics here? In any case, I assume the ethics of CDR referred to really means the ethics of accelerated CDR. Good to see that such activity and its ethics will be put in context of alternative actions as stated in the session description. Greg From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Toby Svoboda [tobysvob...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2014 7:26 AM To: Ronal W. Larson Cc: Geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers * Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) * An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) * Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) * Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.netmailto:rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750). That is, I believe there is general agreement that afforestation/reforestation can be a valuable CDR approach, even though it is certainly not permanent. I claim the same about biochar, with a major portion likely to last for millennia. My concern might extend to Dr. Wong, but certainly to Drs. Vaughan and Lenton. Permanence should never be a requirement for any form of either SRM or CDR. So this is to urge list members to read the Wong paper for the (limited) way that CDR stays in his discussion. 4. Dr. Svoboda yesterday directed our attention in his last sentence to a 2012 (behind pay-wall) article, whose abstract reads (emphasis added): As a strategy for responding to climate change, aerosol geoengineering (AG) carries various risks, thus raising ethical concerns regarding its potential deployment. I examine three ethical arguments that AG ought not to be deployed, given that it (1) risks harming persons, (2) would harm persons, and (3) would be more harmful to persons than some other available strategy. I show that these arguments
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dr. Svoboda, list, and panelists 1. Thanks for the alert on this 1.5 hour panel. I hope that you and/or others can report back on any comparisons found for the ethics of CDR and SRM. 2. Curiously, a major news item relative to biochar just came to my attention yesterday - a report (dated 30 July) by a market research firm on the nascent biochar industry. See http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/biochar-market.html . I mention it only because the report is unlikely to have been on the radar of this panel. 3. My guess is that this is the only market projection for any geoengineering approach. I can't comment on its validity since its cost (about as much as 5 tonnes of char) exceeds my interest level. Without the benefit of reading any but the brief summary, I personally think it is on the conservative side. I am not recommending this report - only reporting on its existence. 4. However, I hope the panelists will factor in the report's rationale (a bit given at the above site), for the sales growth predicted for biochar, into how they compare the ethics of biochar (and competing CDR approaches) in comparison with the SRM approaches. I am not saying that projected future sales should greatly influence discussion of biochar (and other CDR) ethics, but I do believe that the reasons for that projected growth (NOT involving CDR) should have importance in this panel's discussions. 5. The websites of the six companies listed (Agri-Tech Producers, LLC, Biochar Products, Inc., Cool Planet Energy Systems Inc, Blackcarbon, Diacarbon Energy Inc and Genesis Industries) may also be of interest (and two others I know are selling quite a bit are in the 175 companies they say are now considered part of the biochar industry). Again - Prof. Svoboda - thanks for this alert. Best of luck with your panel. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 8:26 AM, Toby Svoboda tobysvob...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750). That is, I
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dr. Svoboda etal (adding Dr. Joseph) Re this just identified Transparency report, whose title was Global Biochar Market is Expected to Reach 300 Kilo Tons and USD 572.3 Million by 2020 Just in tonight, on the Yahoo biochar list, from Dr. Stephen Joseph (a leading biochar researcher in Australia, with recent contacts in China), repeated to support my belief the report was conservative: Well the market in China/Japan has nearly reached that Many believe that the Chinese will do for biochar what they have already done for wind, and solar (both PV and heating) - topics that seem to pass ethical muster rather easily for most analysts. Again, because the Chinese are doing this of course doesn't make biochar (or any CDR approach) ethically correct - but I suggest that the speed of what is happening for one CDR approach (without carbon credits) should factor into ethical (and financial) comparisons between SRM and CDR. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 11:11 PM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, list, and panelists 1. Thanks for the alert on this 1.5 hour panel. I hope that you and/or others can report back on any comparisons found for the ethics of CDR and SRM. 2. Curiously, a major news item relative to biochar just came to my attention yesterday - a report (dated 30 July) by a market research firm on the nascent biochar industry. See http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/biochar-market.html . I mention it only because the report is unlikely to have been on the radar of this panel. 3. My guess is that this is the only market projection for any geoengineering approach. I can't comment on its validity since its cost (about as much as 5 tonnes of char) exceeds my interest level. Without the benefit of reading any but the brief summary, I personally think it is on the conservative side. I am not recommending this report - only reporting on its existence. 4. However, I hope the panelists will factor in the report's rationale (a bit given at the above site), for the sales growth predicted for biochar, into how they compare the ethics of biochar (and competing CDR approaches) in comparison with the SRM approaches. I am not saying that projected future sales should greatly influence discussion of biochar (and other CDR) ethics, but I do believe that the reasons for that projected growth (NOT involving CDR) should have importance in this panel's discussions. 5. The websites of the six companies listed (Agri-Tech Producers, LLC, Biochar Products, Inc., Cool Planet Energy Systems Inc, Blackcarbon, Diacarbon Energy Inc and Genesis Industries) may also be of interest (and two others I know are selling quite a bit are in the 175 companies they say are now considered part of the biochar industry). Again - Prof. Svoboda - thanks for this alert. Best of luck with your panel. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 8:26 AM, Toby Svoboda tobysvob...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that
RE: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dear Tony (and all), Thank you for your thoughts on my response. Based upon what you wrote here, it seems that we have more common ground than I initially thought. My purpose in bringing up the wide array of socially organized responses to other complex problems was to indicate that the challenges to compensation for harm from SRM often also apply to these other responses. What is supposed to follow is that, regarding socially organized responses in general, While these arrangements could be called ethically problematic, they constitute the very core of public policy and that 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. [This is not to imply that you called for paralysis, but such paralysis could be a reader's reasonable response to your ethical problematization of compensation for harm from SRM.] I also do not mean to imply that compensation for SRM harm can fall into only one of two categories: (1) completely novel, or (2) completely not novel. There are clearly points between. Yet I was struck by the fact that, to the large extent that these ethical challenges which you cited also apply in these other social responses, you limited your focus to compensation from SRM harm. With best wishes, -Jesse - Jesse L. Reynolds European and International Public Law Tilburg Sustainability Center Tilburg University, The Netherlands Book review editor, Law, Innovation, and Technology email: j.l.reyno...@uvt.nlmailto:j.l.reyno...@uvt.nl http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/http://bit.ly/1pa26dY http://twitter.com/geoengpolicyhttp://bit.ly/1oQBIpR From: Toby Svoboda [mailto:tobysvob...@gmail.com] Sent: 14 August 2014 22:20 To: geoengineering Cc: Peter Irvine; J.L. Reynolds Subject: Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds Hi All, Interesting discussion. First, regarding intention, much of what has been said above is helpful, and I would second Jesse's recommendation of David Morrow's paperhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2014.926056#.U-0WuWP6eyM on doing/allowing and double effect (full disclosure: David and I are coauthors on a separate project.) I appreciate Jesse's commentary on Peter's and my paper (thanks!), and I wanted to address some of the points he raises. Jesse suggests that the main problem in our paper is that we treat the shortcomings of SRM and of compensation for its potential negative secondary effects as if they were sui generis. But to clarify, it is not our view that SRM compensation is a sui generis problem, nor do we state that it is in our paper. It may well be true that the ethical challenges faced by SRM compensation are already faced in other domains, such as socially organized responses to complex problems, other instances of compensation provision, and climate change (to take Jesse's examples). Our claim was that providing compensation for SRM-related harm faces some difficult challenges. If Jesse is right, many or all of these same challenges arise in other domains, but he does not specify what is supposed to follow from this. Our argument is not undermined by the fact (if it is one) that there are parallels among these various domains, for the challenges to SRM compensation remain challenges even if they are not unique to SRM. Jesse writes that SRM might be especially complex, in large part of its global nature, but that does not make it entirely novel. We can agree with this, because we did not claim that SRM is entirely novel. Nonetheless, since the issue of SRM compensation is particularly complex, it is worth investigating whether we can disentangle the many issues involved and reduce uncertainty regarding them. Jesse also suggests that we stack the deck against SRM, but I think this is due to a misunderstanding of what our paper aims to do. Although we noted throughout the paper that SRM could have many benefits, we did not emphasize these potential benefits because the issue under investigation was compensation provision for harms due to SRM. Of course, this focus would tend to emphasize potential harms, since our primary question was how such harms should be remunerated. Given that question, it would be odd to emphasize the potential benefits of SRM, although we certainly acknowledge them. It is important to note that Peter and I were not addressing whether some form of SRM should be deployed in the future. As we wrote, We conclude that establishing a just SRM compensation system faces severe difficulties. This does not necessarily imply that SRM ought never to be deployed, as there might be satisfactory ways to resolve these difficulties. Furthermore, even if these difficulties are not fully surmounted, it does not necessarily follow
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750). That is, I believe there is general agreement that afforestation/reforestation can be a valuable CDR approach, even though it is certainly not permanent. I claim the same about biochar, with a major portion likely to last for millennia. My concern might extend to Dr. Wong, but certainly to Drs. Vaughan and Lenton. Permanence should never be a requirement for any form of either SRM or CDR. So this is to urge list members to read the Wong paper for the (limited) way that CDR stays in his discussion. 4. Dr. Svoboda yesterday directed our attention in his last sentence to a 2012 (behind pay-wall) article, whose abstract reads (emphasis added): As a strategy for responding to climate change, aerosol geoengineering (AG) carries various risks, thus raising ethical concerns regarding its potential deployment. I examine three ethical arguments that AG ought not to be deployed, given that it (1) risks harming persons, (2) would harm persons, and (3) would be more harmful to persons than some other available strategy. I show that these arguments are not successful. Instead, I defend a fourth argument: in scenarios in which all available climate change strategies would result in net harm, we ought to adopt the strategy that would result in the least net harm. Barring substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, we can reasonably expect future scenarios in which all available strategies would result in net harm. In such cases, there is good reason to suspect that AG would result in less net harm than emissions mitigation, adaptation, or other geoengineering strategies. with this key words in the middle (emphasis added): scenarios ... all ... strategies ...net harm I strongly believe that afforestation/reforestation, biochar and probably several other CDR approaches will result in net good, not net harm. I hope someone can show me why this is not true. If true, then it should follow that Dr. Svoboda's final sentence is not logically valid. I hope some ethicist will challenge my (and many others) view that some forms of CDR are strongly positive forces at this time. 5. I understand that every geoengineering/ethics paper cannot also include CDR. But surely there must be someone interested in the geoengineering /climate/ethics arena who is also interested in the CDR side? And willing to write on the topic - either with or without mentioning SRM? There are many of us ready to help on specific approaches. Caution - one can't write on CDR as a single approach, but there are probably some important ethical general statements about that grow of CDR approaches which we can agree are net positive good. Jim Hansen doesn't discuss SRM; he has mainly talked about the afforestation/reforestation form of CDR (but also see his most recent piece with a tad about biochar two days ago at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140814_JeremiahsProgeny.pdf) Ron Most of the following shortened for clarity: On Aug 14, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Toby Svoboda tobysvob...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Interesting discussion. First, regarding intention, much of what has been said above is helpful, and I would second Jesse's recommendation of David Morrow's paper on doing/allowing and double effect (full disclosure: David and I are coauthors on a separate project.) snip to last Svoboda sentence In some future scenario, it might be permissible to deploy some form of SRM (as I have argued in other published work--see here), but even then we should try to compensate for harm if we can. snip remainder His here refers to
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
For those who will be there, there is a session on this issue of intentional vs. known/foreseen at CE 14 next week: INTENTIONAL UNINTENTIONAL INTERFERENCES IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM Conveners: Harald Stelzer (IASS-Potsdam) http://www.iass-potsdam.de/people/pd-dr-harald-stelzer Fabian Schuppert (Queen's University Belfast) http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/InstituteforCollaborativeResearchintheHumanities/StaffProfiles/DrFabianSchuppert/ Speakers: David R. Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) http://www.davidmorrow.net/ Christopher Preston (University of Montana) http://www.humansandnature.org/christopher-preston-scholar-8.php Clare Heyward (Warwick University) http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/heyward/ Date: Wednesday, 20. August 2014 - 9:00 to 10:30 Location: Pine On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:29:27 AM UTC-6, Josh Horton wrote: Jesse, thanks for posting the Svoboda and Irvine article as well as all four commentaries (including mine!). The question of intent may be misplaced here, because the standard for international liability is usually strict, no-fault liability, which would almost certainly apply to SRM in practice. Under this principle, the key issue is causation/attribution, not intent. Attribution will likely be difficult, but not impossible -- methods like Fraction Attributable Risk are making headway on this front. Josh On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:00:53 AM UTC-4, Jesse Reynolds wrote: My response is one of four to Svoboda and Irvine. In the same issue, there is also a relevant target article by David Morrow 'Starting a flood to stop a fire? Some moral constraints on solar radiation management' with five responses. All are at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cepe21/17/2 I am unsure of the unstated rules regarding posting articles which are behind firewalls. [If anyone knows, please clarify.] Here I am attaching Svoboda and Irvine and its responses. [I hope that this does not overstep the bounds of sharing.] I would be glad to share David's and those responses if anyone wishes and it is OK. There are a few other recent and forthcoming articles on compensation. I am working on one. See also Clare Heyward, Benefitting from Climate Geoengineering and Corresponding Remedial Duties: The Case of Unforeseeable Harms, Journal of Applied Philosophy, (2014) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./japp.12075/abstract Cheers, -Jesse - Jesse L. Reynolds European and International Public Law Tilburg Sustainability Center Tilburg University, The Netherlands Book review editor, Law, Innovation, and Technology email: j.l.re...@uvt.nl http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/ -Original Message- From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: 12 August 2014 19:21 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds 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
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Hi All, Interesting discussion. First, regarding intention, much of what has been said above is helpful, and I would second Jesse's recommendation of David Morrow's paper http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2014.926056#.U-0WuWP6eyM on doing/allowing and double effect (full disclosure: David and I are coauthors on a separate project.) I appreciate Jesse's commentary on Peter's and my paper (thanks!), and I wanted to address some of the points he raises. Jesse suggests that the main problem in our paper is that we treat the shortcomings of SRM and of compensation for its potential negative secondary effects as if they were sui generis. But to clarify, it is not our view that SRM compensation is a sui generis problem, nor do we state that it is in our paper. It may well be true that the ethical challenges faced by SRM compensation are already faced in other domains, such as socially organized responses to complex problems, other instances of compensation provision, and climate change (to take Jesse's examples). Our claim was that providing compensation for SRM-related harm faces some difficult challenges. If Jesse is right, many or all of these same challenges arise in other domains, but he does not specify what is supposed to follow from this. Our argument is not undermined by the fact (if it is one) that there are parallels among these various domains, for the challenges to SRM compensation remain challenges even if they are not unique to SRM. Jesse writes that SRM might be especially complex, in large part of its global nature, but that does not make it entirely novel. We can agree with this, because we did not claim that SRM is entirely novel. Nonetheless, since the issue of SRM compensation is particularly complex, it is worth investigating whether we can disentangle the many issues involved and reduce uncertainty regarding them. Jesse also suggests that we stack the deck against SRM, but I think this is due to a misunderstanding of what our paper aims to do. Although we noted throughout the paper that SRM could have many benefits, we did not emphasize these potential benefits because the issue under investigation was compensation provision for harms due to SRM. Of course, this focus would tend to emphasize potential harms, since our primary question was how such harms should be remunerated. Given that question, it would be odd to emphasize the potential benefits of SRM, although we certainly acknowledge them. It is important to note that Peter and I were not addressing whether some form of SRM should be deployed in the future. As we wrote, We conclude that establishing a just SRM compensation system faces severe difficulties. This does not necessarily imply that SRM ought never to be deployed, as there might be satisfactory ways to resolve these difficulties. Furthermore, even if these difficulties are not fully surmounted, it does not necessarily follow that SRM deployment would be impermissible. We certainly don't think the challenges of SRM compensation should create paralysis among policy makers, nor that the ethical uncertainty involved provides a decisive reason against deployment, but we do think these challenges are worth considering. In some future scenario, it might be permissible to deploy some form of SRM (as I have argued in other published work--see here http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0type=summaryurl=/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v017/17.2.svoboda.html), but even then we should try to compensate for harm if we can. Thanks, Toby Svoboda On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Christopher Preston christopherpreston1...@gmail.com wrote: For those who will be there, there is a session on this issue of intentional vs. known/foreseen at CE 14 next week: INTENTIONAL UNINTENTIONAL INTERFERENCES IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM Conveners: Harald Stelzer (IASS-Potsdam) http://www.iass-potsdam.de/people/pd-dr-harald-stelzer Fabian Schuppert (Queen's University Belfast) http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/InstituteforCollaborativeResearchintheHumanities/StaffProfiles/DrFabianSchuppert/ Speakers: David R. Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) http://www.davidmorrow.net/ Christopher Preston (University of Montana) http://www.humansandnature.org/christopher-preston-scholar-8.php Clare Heyward (Warwick University) http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/heyward/ Date: Wednesday, 20. August 2014 - 9:00 to 10:30 Location: Pine On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:29:27 AM UTC-6, Josh Horton wrote: Jesse, thanks for posting the Svoboda and Irvine article as well as all four commentaries (including mine!). The question of intent may be misplaced here, because the standard for international liability is usually strict, no-fault liability, which would almost certainly apply to SRM in practice. Under this principle, the key issue is causation/attribution, not intent. Attribution will likely be difficult, but not impossible -- methods like
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
I'm sorry if I was unclear. Intent and attribution are of course independent of each other, but both would be relevant to attempts to secure compensation for post/mid-CE weather disasters. Of the two, intent will be the far easier one to determine. Again: Are there fundamental differences in the compensation issue between climate change that is produced intentionally versus climate change that is produced knowingly? If we go by historical and legal parallels, yes. If your action triggers a harmful result that you knew was a possibility and took reasonable measures to prevent, the punishment is usually less than if you ignored/discounted that possibility, and far less than if you intended that harmful result. In most scenarios the potentially-provable accusation would be of negligence, not assault with a climate weapon. But again, intent is comparatively simple to determine. Attribution will be the much more difficult task, and the one most likely to cause a political crisis. Proving legally that Weather Disaster X was caused primarily by climate engineering will be extremely difficult; proving it politically, conversely, will be (unfortunately) quite simple. -Jamais On Aug 12, 2014, at 2:53 PM, Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu wrote: How does whether the intervention was intentional vs. merely knowing affect the attribution problem? Attribution of effects to causes in physical systems is independent of motivations. In either case, damaging third parties was not the goal. In both cases (intentionally vs knowingly causing climate change), someone is will to damage (or risk damaging) third parties to achieve some other goal. In what ways do the compensation to the third party depend on the details of what the other goal might have been? Again: Are there fundamental differences in the compensation issue between climate change that is produced intentionally versus climate change that is produced knowingly? 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? ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Jamais Cascio cas...@openthefuture.com 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Jesse, thanks for posting the Svoboda and Irvine article as well as all four commentaries (including mine!). The question of intent may be misplaced here, because the standard for international liability is usually strict, no-fault liability, which would almost certainly apply to SRM in practice. Under this principle, the key issue is causation/attribution, not intent. Attribution will likely be difficult, but not impossible -- methods like Fraction Attributable Risk are making headway on this front. Josh On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:00:53 AM UTC-4, Jesse Reynolds wrote: My response is one of four to Svoboda and Irvine. In the same issue, there is also a relevant target article by David Morrow 'Starting a flood to stop a fire? Some moral constraints on solar radiation management' with five responses. All are at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cepe21/17/2 I am unsure of the unstated rules regarding posting articles which are behind firewalls. [If anyone knows, please clarify.] Here I am attaching Svoboda and Irvine and its responses. [I hope that this does not overstep the bounds of sharing.] I would be glad to share David's and those responses if anyone wishes and it is OK. There are a few other recent and forthcoming articles on compensation. I am working on one. See also Clare Heyward, Benefitting from Climate Geoengineering and Corresponding Remedial Duties: The Case of Unforeseeable Harms, Journal of Applied Philosophy, (2014) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./japp.12075/abstract Cheers, -Jesse - Jesse L. Reynolds European and International Public Law Tilburg Sustainability Center Tilburg University, The Netherlands Book review editor, Law, Innovation, and Technology email: j.l.re...@uvt.nl javascript: http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/ -Original Message- From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto: geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: 12 August 2014 19:21 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds 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 SI'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, SI write that ‘The potential for SRM
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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 SI'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, SI 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
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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 SI'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, SI 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
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
How does whether the intervention was intentional vs. merely knowing affect the attribution problem? Attribution of effects to causes in physical systems is independent of motivations. In either case, damaging third parties was not the goal. In both cases (intentionally vs knowingly causing climate change), someone is will to damage (or risk damaging) third parties to achieve some other goal. In what ways do the compensation to the third party depend on the details of what the other goal might have been? Again: Are there fundamental differences in the compensation issue between climate change that is produced intentionally versus climate change that is produced knowingly? 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? ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Jamais Cascio cas...@openthefuture.com 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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:
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
I'm surprised that nobody ever seems to mention that, philosophically, geoengineering is rather like the trolley problem (particularly the 'fat man' case). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem Consideration of this seems particularly appropriate to earlier discussions on this thread. A On 12 August 2014 22:53, Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu wrote: How does whether the intervention was intentional vs. merely knowing affect the attribution problem? Attribution of effects to causes in physical systems is independent of motivations. In either case, damaging third parties was not the goal. In both cases (intentionally vs knowingly causing climate change), someone is will to damage (or risk damaging) third parties to achieve some other goal. In what ways do the compensation to the third party depend on the details of what the other goal might have been? Again: Are there fundamental differences in the compensation issue between climate change that is produced intentionally versus climate change that is produced knowingly? 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? ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Jamais Cascio cas...@openthefuture.com 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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.,
RE: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
I use that every time I give a talk on SRM! Though I'm not quite sure it's entirely apt. If we burn fossil fuels, we know we are causing damage to large groups of people that one could in principle list. If we choose to implement some limited amount of SRM, we can hypothesize that there could be people who would be damaged, but as of today, we don't know who or where those might be, other than those who benefit from climate change. (Obviously if we do too much solar geoengineering, there would be people who suffer, but with a more realistic limited deployment, the suffering is a hypothesis.) Regarding intentional vs knowing, we do prosecute people who drive drunk and kill people, on the basis that we know before doing the drinking that driving drunk puts people at risk. So we certainly do not treat incidental damage as irrelevant. doug -Original Message- From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 3:55 PM To: Ken Caldeira Cc: Jamais Cascio; geoengineering; Irvine, Peter; tsvob...@fairfield.edu Subject: Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds I'm surprised that nobody ever seems to mention that, philosophically, geoengineering is rather like the trolley problem (particularly the 'fat man' case). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem Consideration of this seems particularly appropriate to earlier discussions on this thread. A On 12 August 2014 22:53, Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu wrote: How does whether the intervention was intentional vs. merely knowing affect the attribution problem? Attribution of effects to causes in physical systems is independent of motivations. In either case, damaging third parties was not the goal. In both cases (intentionally vs knowingly causing climate change), someone is will to damage (or risk damaging) third parties to achieve some other goal. In what ways do the compensation to the third party depend on the details of what the other goal might have been? Again: Are there fundamental differences in the compensation issue between climate change that is produced intentionally versus climate change that is produced knowingly? 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? ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Jamais Cascio cas...@openthefuture.com 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com 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
RE: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds (intention)
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 cas...@openthefuture.com 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 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu 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
