RE: [geo] CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM SOLAR GEOENGINEERING PROJECT

[Douglas MacMartin]

Well, to the extent that one can interpret the CBD decision as a moratorium or 
not, it still has an explicit exception for research (and I think one would be 
hard-pressed to claim that SCoPEx will itself have negative impacts on 
biodiversity), so I think it is fair to say that the authors of this piece are 
perfectly well aware that their statements are not true.  They clearly don’t 
support the CBD decision as written and want to pretend that it says something 
else...

(And it has always been clear that Louise was acting in a personal capacity, so 
the first line of this is also simply silly.)


From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com  On 
Behalf Of Andrew Lockley
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 6:06 PM
To: geoengineering 
Subject: [geo] CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM SOLAR GEOENGINEERING 
PROJECT

Poster's note: the moratorium claim is controversial/wrong, but I don't know if 
the rest of this stands up


http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2020/06/california-government-backs-away-from-solar-geoengineering-project-but-doesnt-withdraw/

CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM SOLAR GEOENGINEERING PROJECT – BUT 
DOESN’T WITHDRAW
JUN 17 2020

The California State government is looking to distance itself from a 
controversial solar geoengineering project after pressure from civil society 
and movement groups around the world.

Last July, the California Strategic Growth Council – a part of the California 
State government with direct ties to Governor Gavin Newsom’s office – announced 
that its Executive Director, Louise Bedsworth, would be joining the advisory 
committee of a prominent solar geoengineering project, SCoPEx, hosted at 
Harvard University. They even issued a press release – featuring the California 
Strategic Growth Council logo, which features a map of the state – announcing 
that Bedsworth would be chairing the advisory committee, which aims to 
legitimize the SCoPEx experiments.

A letter signed by civil society groups from around the world called on 
Bedsworth and seven other “advisors,” all US-based, to resign.

That press release has now been removed from the Harvard University SCoPEx web 
site. Strategic Growth Council officials, including Bedsworth, have attempted 
to backpedal by issuing statements claiming the SGC has nothing to do with 
SCoPEx, and that Bedsworth is acting in a personal capacity.

SCoPEx is aiming to proceed despite an international moratorium on open-air 
geoengineering experiments supported by 196 countries that have signed the UN 
Convention on Biodiversity.

Development of solar geoengineering at a large scale would have serious global 
impacts, including changes in weather patterns, and potentially floods and 
droughts affecting the global south. For this reason, groups from around the 
world have called on all members of the SCoPEx advisory committee to step down.

To date, Bedsworth has not stepped down. The Executive Director of the 
California Strategic Growth Council continues to serve as the chair of a 
committee designed to legitimize something it has no authority to authorize — 
even as the state agency makes efforts to distance itself from previous support 
for the research. Sign the letter here.

Response from Kate Gordon, Chair of California Strategic Growth Council and 
Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research

Thank you for reaching out. Louise Bedsworth participates in SCoPEx in her 
personal capacity; no state resources have been expended on this work and it is 
unrelated to her work at the Strategic Growth Council. We are working with 
Harvard to make this clearer on the website; however this was made very clear 
in the original statement from the advisory committee on their engagement in 
this work, found at http://scopexac.com/news-and-updates/:

“We are contributing to this Committee as individuals with different expertise, 
experiences, and perspectives, and we will remain true to our values and 
beliefs as we conduct this work.”

Below please find a statement from Dr. Bedsworth. If you have additional 
comments please address them to Sally Klimp, Executive Coordinator, SCoPEx 
Advisory Committee, skl...@g.harvard.edu

Thank you,

Kate Gordon

Statement from Louise Bedsworth, PhD, Chair of the SCoPEx Advisory Committee

June 11, 2020

I am writing this statement in response to recent claims that my participation 
in this Advisory Committee represents an endorsement of this research by my 
employer, the California Strategic Growth Council. I will state emphatically 
that it does not.

I am undertaking this work in a volunteer capacity based on my previous work on 
broader issues of research governance, related both to solar geoengineering and 
other topics. The SCoPEx team has received no funding or endorsement by the 
Council, nor have any state resources been used to support this work. We have 
updated the Advisory Committee’s website to make this clear.

Neither my role nor the 

[geo] CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM SOLAR GEOENGINEERING PROJECT

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note: the moratorium claim is controversial/wrong, but I don't
know if the rest of this stands up


http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2020/06/california-government-backs-away-from-solar-geoengineering-project-but-doesnt-withdraw/

CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT BACKS AWAY FROM SOLAR GEOENGINEERING PROJECT – BUT
DOESN’T WITHDRAW
JUN 17 2020

The California State government is looking to distance itself from a
controversial solar geoengineering project after pressure from civil
society and movement groups around the world.

Last July, the California Strategic Growth Council – a part of the
California State government with direct ties to Governor Gavin Newsom’s
office – announced that its Executive Director, Louise Bedsworth, would be
joining the advisory committee of a prominent solar geoengineering project,
SCoPEx, hosted at Harvard University. They even issued a press release –
featuring the California Strategic Growth Council logo, which features a
map of the state – announcing that Bedsworth would be chairing the advisory
committee, which aims to legitimize the SCoPEx experiments.

A letter signed by civil society groups from around the world called on
Bedsworth and seven other “advisors,” all US-based, to resign.

That press release has now been removed from the Harvard University SCoPEx
web site. Strategic Growth Council officials, including Bedsworth, have
attempted to backpedal by issuing statements claiming the SGC has nothing
to do with SCoPEx, and that Bedsworth is acting in a personal capacity.

SCoPEx is aiming to proceed despite an international moratorium on open-air
geoengineering experiments supported by 196 countries that have signed the
UN Convention on Biodiversity.

Development of solar geoengineering at a large scale would have serious
global impacts, including changes in weather patterns, and potentially
floods and droughts affecting the global south. For this reason, groups
from around the world have called on all members of the SCoPEx advisory
committee to step down.

To date, Bedsworth has not stepped down. The Executive Director of the
California Strategic Growth Council continues to serve as the chair of a
committee designed to legitimize something it has no authority to authorize
— even as the state agency makes efforts to distance itself from previous
support for the research. Sign the letter here.

Response from Kate Gordon, Chair of California Strategic Growth Council and
Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research

Thank you for reaching out. Louise Bedsworth participates in SCoPEx in her
personal capacity; no state resources have been expended on this work and
it is unrelated to her work at the Strategic Growth Council. We are working
with Harvard to make this clearer on the website; however this was made
very clear in the original statement from the advisory committee on their
engagement in this work, found at http://scopexac.com/news-and-updates/:

“We are contributing to this Committee as individuals with different
expertise, experiences, and perspectives, and we will remain true to our
values and beliefs as we conduct this work.”

Below please find a statement from Dr. Bedsworth. If you have additional
comments please address them to Sally Klimp, Executive Coordinator, SCoPEx
Advisory Committee, skl...@g.harvard.edu

Thank you,

Kate Gordon

Statement from Louise Bedsworth, PhD, Chair of the SCoPEx Advisory Committee

June 11, 2020

I am writing this statement in response to recent claims that my
participation in this Advisory Committee represents an endorsement of this
research by my employer, the California Strategic Growth Council. I will
state emphatically that it does not.

I am undertaking this work in a volunteer capacity based on my previous
work on broader issues of research governance, related both to solar
geoengineering and other topics. The SCoPEx team has received no funding or
endorsement by the Council, nor have any state resources been used to
support this work. We have updated the Advisory Committee’s website to make
this clear.

Neither my role nor the committee’s role is to enable this research to
happen, but rather to establish norms and rules around the scientific,
regulatory, and societal repercussions of this work. As our Committee has
stated, none of us have entered into this work with a preconceived idea
that this research should happen. Rather we are committed to ensuring that
if the research proceeds, it does so in a technically and ethically sound
manner. We will continue to conduct our work in an open and transparent
manner to achieve these goals.

-- 
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 geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 

[geo] Availability of risky geoengineering can make an ambitious climate mitigation agreement more likely

[Andrew Lockley]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0492-6

Availability of risky geoengineering can make an ambitious climate
mitigation agreement more likely
Adrien Fabre & Gernot Wagner
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 7, Article number: 1
(2020) Cite this article

1 Altmetric

Metricsdetails

Abstract
Some countries prefer high to low mitigation (H ≻ L). Some prefer low to
high (L ≻ H). That fundamental disagreement is at the heart of the seeming
intractability of negotiating a climate mitigation agreement. Modelling
global climate negotiations as a weakest-link game brings this to the fore:
Unless everyone prefers H to L, L wins. Enter geoengineering (G). Its risky
and imperfect nature makes it arguably inferior to any country’s preferred
mitigation outcome. However, absent a global high-mitigation agreement,
countries facing disastrous climate damages might indeed wish to undertake
it, effectively ranking H ≻ G ≻ L. Meanwhile, those least affected by
climate damages and, thus, least inclined to agree to an ambitious
mitigation agreement, might be unwilling to engage in risky geoengineering,
resulting in L ≻ H ≻ G. With these rankings, all players prefer H to G, and
the mere availability of a credible geoengineering threat might help induce
an ambitious climate mitigation agreement (H). The analysis here introduces
the simplest possible model of global climate negotiations and derives the
conditions for this outcome. These conditions may indeed be likely, as long
as geoengineering is viewed as a credible albeit risky emergency response
given the danger of low mitigation levels.

-- 
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 geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-04aiK%2B4%2BEhGtG2q%3D2Kfatm77aqqkMFocerwSXp3unYzKg%40mail.gmail.com.