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PICKING OUR POISON: A CONDITIONAL DEFENSE OF GEOENGINEERING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2022

Christopher Freiman
Christopher Freiman*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, College of William and Mary, USA
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Abstract

Geoengineering involves intentionally modifying the environment on a massive scale and is typically proposed as a last resort to prevent catastrophic harms caused by climate change. Critics argue that there are powerful moral reasons against researching, let alone undertaking, geoengineering. Perhaps most notably, Stephen Gardiner argues that even if we are forced to choose between allowing a climate catastrophe or geoengineering—and geoengineering is the less harmful option—it could still be the case that we ought not to geoengineer. This essay argues for a conditional: if we are indeed forced to choose between catastrophic environmental harm and the less harmful option of geoengineering, then we ought to geoengineer.

Keywords

environmental ethicsclimate changegeoengineering
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Winter 2021 , pp. 11 - 28
Copyright
© 2022 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA

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Footnotes

*

Department of Philosophy, College of William and Mary, [email protected]. Competing Interests: The author declares none. For their helpful feedback, I owe thanks to David Schmidtz, an anonymous referee, and the other contributors to this volume.

References

1 Dana Nuccitelli, “Climate Change Could Cost the U.S. Economy Hundreds of Billions a Year by 2090,” Yale Climate Connections. 4.29.19. Accessed 2.3.20. Available at: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/04/climate-change-could-cost-u-s-economy-billions/

2 World Health Organization, “Climate Change and Health,” 2.1.18. Accessed 2.3.20. Available at: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health

3 This is roughly the definition found in David Keith, “Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 25, no. 18 (2000): 245–84. For philosophical discussions of geoengineering, see, e.g., Dale Jamieson, “Ethics and Intentional Climate Change,” Climate Change 33, no. 3 (1996): 323–36; Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 10; Christopher Preston, “Re-Thinking the Unthinkable: Environmental Ethics and the Presumptive Argument Against Geoengineering,” Environmental Values 20, no. 4 (2011): 457-79; Rolston, Holmes III, “The Anthropocene! Beyond the Natural,” in The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, ed. Gardiner, Stephen and Thompson, Allen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 62–74.Google Scholar

4 See, e.g., Peter Irvine, Kerry Emanuel, Jie He, Larry Horwitz, Gabriel Vecchi, and David Keith, “Halving Warming with Idealized Solar Geoengineering Moderates Key Climate Hazards,” Nature Climate Change 9, no. 4 (2019): 295–99; Phillip Williamson, Douglas W. R. Wallace, Cliff S. Law, Philip W. Boyd, Yves Collos, Peter Croot, Ken Denman, Ulf Riebesell, Shigenobu Takeda, Chris Vivian, “Ocean Fertilization for Geoengineering: A Review of Effectiveness, Environmental Impacts and Emerging Governance,” Process Safety and Environmental Protection 90, no. 6 (2012): 475–88.

5 This latter line of thought is explored in Victor, David, Morgan, M. Granger, Apt, Jay, Steinbruner, John, and Ricke, Katharine, “The Geoengineering Option: A Last Resort Against Global Warming?” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 2(2009): 64–76.Google Scholar

6 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 353.

7 See Nuccitelli, “Climate Change Could Cost the U.S. Economy Hundreds of Billions a Year by 2090,”and World Health Organization, “Climate Change and Health,” respectively.

8 On compensation, see, e.g., Singer, Peter, “Ethics and Climate Change: A Commentary on MacCracken, Toman, and Gardiner,” Environmental Values 15, no. 3 (2006): 415–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 366.

9 See, e.g., Victor et al., “The Geoengineering Option.” The Royal Society notes, “Solar Radiation Management methods may provide a potentially useful short-term backup to mitigation in case rapid reductions in global temperatures are needed,” in The Royal Society, “Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance, and Uncertainty” (London: Royal Society, 2009): xi.

10 See, e.g., Richard Brandt, Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 151; Brad Hooker, Ideal Code, Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 98-99; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30.

11 American Meteorological Society, “Geoengineering the Climate System,” 1.6.13. Accessed 2.10.20. Available online at: https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/geoengineering-the-climate-system/

12 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 356.

13 Edward Parson, “Reflections on Air Capture: The Political Economy of Active Intervention in the Global Environment,” Climatic Change 74, no. 1 (2006): 5–15; Natural Environment Research Council, Experiment Earth? Public Dialogue on Geoengineering (Swindon, UK: Natural Environment Research Council, 2010); Albert Lin, “Does Geoengineering Present a Moral Hazard?” Ecology Law Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2013): 673–712.

14 Gardiner raises this point as well; see Stephen Gardiner, “Some Early Ethics of Geoengineering the Climate: A Commentary on the Values of the Royal Society Report,” Environmental Values 20, no. 2 (2011): 163–88, 167. I discuss the issue of political inertia and climate change in greater detail in Christopher Freiman, Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics (New York: Routledge, 2020), chap. 4.

15 Brad Plumer, “U.S. Carbon Emissions Surged in 2018 Even As Coal Plants Closed,” The New York Times 1.8.19. Accessed 6.25.19. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-increase.html

16 Amber Philips, “Congress’s Long History of Inaction on Climate Change, in 6 Acts,” Washington Post. 12.1.15. Accessed 6.25.19. Available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/01/congresss-long-history-of-inaction-on-climate-change-in-6-parts/?utm_term=.66aaa8c8b1ed

17 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Strengthening and Implementing the Global Response.” Accessed 9.24.20. Available online at: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/

18 I explore this point in further detail in Christopher Freiman, Unequivocal Justice (New York: Routledge, 2017), 7–10.

19 Geoffrey Brennan, “Climate Change: A Rational Choice Politics View,” The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 53, no. 3 (2009): 309–326.

20 See Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

21 Ibid., 323.

22 Rasmussen Reports, "Toplines – Cap and Trade I – May 7-8, 2009.” 5.7-8.2009. Accessed 6.6.19. Available online at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/may_2009/toplines_cap_trade_i_may_7_8_2009

23 Pew Research Center, “Elaborating on the Views of AAAS Scientists, Issue by Issue,” 7.23.15. Accessed 6.25.19. Available online at: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/07/23/elaborating-on-the-views-of-aaas-scientists-issue-by-issue/

24 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 366.

25 On the costs of geoengineering, see Scott Barrett, “The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering,” Environmental and Resource Economics 39, no. 1 (2008): 45–54.

26 Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, “New Poll: Nearly Half of Americans Are More Convinced Than They Were Five Years Ago That Climate Change Is Happening, With Extreme Weather Driving Their Views.” 1.22.18 Accessed 2.13.20. Available online at: http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Documents/EPIC_press_release.pdf

27 This point is discussed in greater detail in Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman, Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). That geoengineering requires less collective action than alternatives comes with costs as well as benefits, however. For instance, a nation that expects to suffer particularly large harms as a result of climate change may decide to unilaterally geoengineer and perhaps put other nations at risk. Yet nations that are at a comparatively low risk for climate change harms may be motivated to pursue effective mitigation policies precisely because they wish to avoid the risks posed by unilateral geoengineering. For discussion, see Adam Millard-Ball, “The Tuvalu Syndrome. Can Geoengineering Solve Climate’s Collective Action Problem?” Climatic Change 110, nos. 3-4 (2012): 1047-1066; Adrien Fabre and Gernot Wagner, “Availability of Risky Geoengineering Can Make an Ambitious Climate Mitigation Agreement More Likely,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0492-6. Thus, the prospect of unilateral geoengineering is something to take seriously, but it’s unclear at this stage of inquiry what sort of results we should expect it to bring about.

28 Campbell, Troy and Kay, Aaron, “Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, no. 5 (2014) 809–824.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

29 Ibid.

30 Kahan, Dan, Jenkins-Smith, Hank, Tarantola, Tor, Silva, Carol, and Braman, Donald, “Geoengineering and Climate Change Polarization: Testing a Two-Channel Model of Science Communication,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658, no. 1 (2015): 192–222, 206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 A variation on the inertia objection could allege that geoengineering research will have a tendency to spotlight geoengineering’s benefits and understate its costs, thereby de-motivating the pursuit of alternative climate policies. This strikes me as a plausible concern (although I suspect the widespread skepticism of geoengineering would mitigate this tendency.) However, I don’t regard this as a decisive objection to geoengineering because a similar worry applies to its alternatives as well. All policy and technological responses to climate change have costs and benefits, and it’s natural that those invested in any given response downplay the former and highlight the latter. Thanks are due to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.

32 The importance of knowing the risk of not geoengineering explains why arguments alleging that geoengineering might be appropriately regarded as “unthinkable” are unpersuasive. See Gardiner A Perfect Moral Storm, 383-85. On the “unthinkable,” see Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against, with Smart, J. J. C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar I provide a more detailed defense of the consideration of opportunity costs in environmental ethics in Christopher Freiman, “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Value of Environmental Goods,” Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 13 (2015): 337–47.

33 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 383.

34 Ibid., italics mine.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 353.

37 Jamieson, “Ethics and Intentional Climate Change,”325.

38 Taylor, Paul, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 175.Google Scholar

39 Hamilton, Clive, “Geoengineering and the Politics of Science,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 3 (2014): 17–26, 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 For a similar point, see Preston, “Re-Thinking the Unthinkable,” 461-62. Preston, however, thinks that “meddling with the earth’s fundamental processes,” as geoengineering would, may be morally different. “Re-Thinking the Unthinkable,” 463 (italics mine).

41 I explore worries about a duty to not interfere with nature in Freiman, Christopher, “Why Parents Should Enhance Their Children,” in The Ethics of Ability and Enhancement, ed. Flanigan, Jessica and Price, Terry (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 158–59.Google Scholar

42 I owe this observation to an anonymous referee.

43 Jeffrey Kiehl, “Geoengineering Climate Change: Treating the Symptom Over the Cause? Climatic Change 77, no. 3 (2006): 227–28, at 228. See also Holmes Rolston III “The Anthropocene!” 68.

44 Stephen Schneider, “Geoengineering: Could We or Should We Make It Work?” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 366 (2008): 3843–3862, 3857. See also Schneider, Stephen, “Geoengineering: Could—Or Should—We Do It?” Climatic Change 33, no. 3 (1996): 291–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Clive Hamilton, “Geoengineering Is Not a Solution to Climate Change,” Scientific American. 3.10.15. Accessed 2.13.20. Available online at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-is-not-a-solution-to-climate-change/

46 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 392, italics in the original.

47 It’s worth noting, though, that those who research or even engage in geoengineering need not themselves be guilty of a moral failure. Perhaps they are attempting to mobilize support for alternative measures, but foresee that their attempts may not persuade enough people to succeed. Here it seems blameless to research, and even implement, geoengineering as a backup plan in case their best efforts fall short. I owe this thought to an anonymous referee.

48 Christopher Preston (“Re-Thinking the Unthinkable,” 470) makes a similar point:

Our failure to address greenhouse gas emissions means [ … ] the blighting has already occurred. Any discussion of the tarnishing or blighting that might result from the decision to geoengineer may be moot. The moral damage already been done. Clearly the fact that we are already blighted does not provide free reign to compound our moral condition by performing additional evils. But climate engineering may not in the end be a compounding evil. Rather, it could serious attempt to make amends.

49 Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 393, italics in the original. On risk redistribution, see also American Meteorological Society, “Geoengineering the Climate System,” 2013.

50 James Conca, “How Deadly is Your Kilowatt? We Rank the Killer Energy Sources,” Forbes. 6.10.12. Accessed 2.14.20. Available online at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#390f347a709b

51 James Conca, “Forget Eagle Deaths, Wind Turbines Kill Humans,” Forbes. 9.29.13. Accessed 2.14.20. Available online at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-eagle-deaths-wind-turbines-kill-humans/#6c2b70895467; David Biello, “Explosive Silicon Gas Casts Shadow on Solar Power Industry,” Scientific American. 4.2.10. Accessed 2.14.20. Available online at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/explosive-gas-silane-used-to-make-photovoltaics/

52 World Health Organization, “Global Vaccine Safety,” 1.7.09. Accessed 2.14.20. Available online at: https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/smallpox/questions/en/

53 Eric Mack argues that we may be within our rights to violate our ordinary moral obligations in emergency conditions, but that we must provide compensation when we can. In his example, you may break into an empty cabin to avoid freezing to death, but you are obligated to compensate the owner of the cabin. Eric Mack, “Non-Absolute Rights and Libertarian Taxation,” Social Philosophy and Policy 23, no. 2 (2006): 109-141. This style of view might permit geoengineering if it is the only way to avoid a catastrophe but insist that the beneficiaries compensate those harmed.

54 Hill, Thomas, “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments,” Environmental Ethics 5, no. 3 (1983): 211–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Clive Hamilton, “The Risks of Climate Engineering,” The New York Times. 2.12.15. Accessed 2.14.20. Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/opinion/the-risks-of-climate-engineering.html. See also Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, 391; Rolston III, “The Anthropocene!” 67.

56 For instance, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito argued that same-sex marriage clashes with the “traditional” understanding of marriage: “For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). The author Pearl Buck apparently believed that the birth control pill “would destroy the nation’s sexual mores and unravel the fabric of marriage and family, leading to social chaos.” Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 72.

57 Rolston III, “The Anthropocene!” 67.

58 Brandon Miller and Jay Croft, “Planet Has Only Until 2030 to Stem Catastrophic Climate Change, Experts Warn,” CNN 10.8.18. Accessed 9.24.20. Available online at: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/07/world/climate-change-new-ipcc-report-wxc/index.html

59 Schmidtz, David, Person, Polis, Planet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 235.Google Scholar

60 Stephen Schneider (“Geoengineering: Could We or Should We Make It Work?” 3858) considers an objection along these lines and responds in part by noting that “’geo’ and ‘social’ engineering” are both “sufficiently unprecedented on the scales being considered here that estimates of impacts will remain highly uncertain and subjective for some time to come. Moreover, values will dominate the trade-off: for example, risk aversion versus risk proneness or the precautionary principle for protecting nature versus the unfettered capacity of enterprising individuals, firms or nations to act to improve their economic conditions.” This style of response, however, does not adequately address the worry I raise here, which is that risk aversion itself, not “the unfettered capacity of enterprising individuals, firms, or nations to act to improve their economic conditions,” is a reason for precaution in the case of economic change.

61 Lisa Mullins and Lynn Jolicoeur, “Harvard Scientists Plan First-Ever Field Experiment Related To Solar Geoengineering,” WBUR Earthwhile. 7.22.20. Accessed 9.24.20. Available online at: https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/07/22/harvard-solar-geoengineering-climate-change

62 David Keith and Douglas MacMartin,“ A Temporary, Moderate and Responsive Scenario for Solar Geoengineering,” Nature Climate Change 5, no. 3 (2015): 201–206.

63 There is of course no guarantee that even cautious geoengineering will not result in long-term, unforeseen harms. But climate change itself threatens to produce long-term, unforeseen harms. Thus, in the event we reach a point where geoengineering is considered as a last resort to avoid a climate catastrophe, the mere fact that geoengineering might result in long-term, unforeseen harms would not suffice to rule it out as an option given that the alternative also risks long-term unforeseen harms.

64 On the need for further research, see Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty (Royal Society: London, 2009); National Research Council, Advancing the Science of Climate Change (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010); National Research Council, America’s Climate Choices (Washington, DC: National Academies Press), 2011.