Dr Clare Heyward, of the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam Germany, spoke at the Canberra Negative Emissions Technology Conference on challenges and opportunities of negative emission technologies, reflecting on moral debates in political philosophy around geoengineering.
Dr Heyward noted that this is a new area of discussion, with the Canberra meeting only the second ever conference on NETs, following the
conference in Sweden in May 2018. She said the need to discuss both solar radiation management and greenhouse gas removal arises from recognition of the severe impacts of climate change as an existential crisis for our planet, and commented that failure to find ways to stop dangerous warming presents an ethical imperative to consider technology, aiming to adapt to a changed world, rectify impacts of past emissions and reduce future emissions.
My own view is that placing this existential moral crisis for our species in a cultural framework can usefully draw on religious metaphors for the apocalyptic risks of conflict, collapse and extinction caused by global warming, portraying the human situation as imperilled by the four horsemen of war, death, plague and famine.
Dr Heyward did not use such religious imagery, but said that morality is inherent in our response to global warming, putting NETs in the context of normative values, the philosophy of what we believe we should do. The dangerous threats raise moral problems around how we should respond, who should be responsible, what priorities should be considered and implications around timing.
Dr Heyward suggested a good reference is the 2009 book
Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Dr Michael Hulme (link is to a 3 page synopsis). A key issue in this book is that values are not explicit, presenting a challenge to science, so a philosophical discussion on values, for example around the primacy of relationships over technology, can help to clarify strategic directions and priorities. In this short summary Dr Hulme explains some rather provocative views on how to think about climate change that align with my views. Here are some key points:
Michael Hulme wrote:Science may be solving the mysteries of climate, but it is not helping us discover the meaning of climate change... we must approach the idea of climate change as an imaginative resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can and should take shape...The idea of climate change can provoke new ethical and theological thinking about our relationship with the future... Creative applications of the idea of climate change... may be hindered by the search for [global] agreement. "
Dr Heyward recommends not using the rubric of geoengineering, given how carbon dioxide removal NETs are overshadowed (pun) by solar radiation management. Instead, she says technology-specific discussions are needed on ethics and governance, aiming for what she termed an ‘integrationist’ perspective, addressing themes of distributive justice, vulnerability, resources, moral hazard, compensation, unforeseen impacts, conflict, biodiversity, hubris, land use, values and liabilities.
Questions arising through efforts to integrate climate change into a wholistic worldview include whether technology advocates have an inflated sense of ability to intervene in planetary systems, who decides and how, and whether technologies can be imposed on communities who oppose them. The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations present an example of efforts toward an Integrationist perspective, with linked goals addressing human rights. Some NETs affect goals under SDG 14 on oceans.
This philosophical perspective from Dr Heyward was welcome to me due to her effort to place the geoengineering discourse in the obvious and realistic strategic context that the dangers and costs of climate change are far greater than the risks of testing all options to prevent it.
Unfortunately that moral perspective of the balance of risks seems largely absent from public debates. Leaving aside the psychosis of climate denial, climate advocacy tends to be dominated by left wing fools who see climate change entirely through the class war opportunity of an attack on the fossil fuel industries, and who therefore automatically oppose all geoengineering efforts by invoking this class war narrative.
The moral imperative is to assess the impacts of options, and it is abundantly clear that the science shows that failure to geoengineer would definitely be catastrophic, whereas immediate testing of proposals offers some change of averting climate disaster.
I therefore disagreed with Dr Heyward’s opposition to geoengineering language. I argue in favour of geoengineering, and see questions of semantic framing as secondary. The concept of geoengineering has emerged from a technical mindset, among people who lack the capacity to frame the argument in political terms, even though the basic technical ideas are sound around the urgent need to cool the planet.
By contrast, the extremists who oppose geoengineering are more effective at political rhetoric, so have been effective in their unconscionable tactic of whipping up groundless fears. Preventing research on geoengineering perversely undermines the claimed objective of stopping global warming.
Tactical retreat on language may seem helpful in a toxic culture, but indicates weakness and a lack of certainty about strategy. The context here is a war for the future of the planet. In this dangerous situation it is worth considering the advice from the Emperor Napoleon, that in politics one should never retreat, never retract and never admit a mistake, even if not to that blank extent. The basic ideas of geoengineering are urgent, sound and essential. Refusing any concession to opponents is the best way to frame public debate to prevent dangerous warming.
The urgent geoengineering path is immediate solar radiation management to stop the impending crisis of cascading tipping points, accompanied by public private partnerships to develop methods to remove carbon from the air and sea, alongside the smaller task of cutting emissions. Taxing carbon is helpful for these efforts, but could prove marginal to the main agenda of devoting massive resources to stopping global warming as the primary security threat facing our planet.