IOP PUBLISHING ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (2009) 045104 (3pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045104
Researching geoengineering: should not or
could not?
Martin Bunzl
Department of Philosophy, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick,
NJ 08901, USA
Received 8 May 2009
Accepted for publication 18 September 2009
Published 30 October 2009
Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/4/045104
Abstract
Is geoengineering a feasible, sensible, or practical stopgap measure for us to have in our arsenal
of potential responses to global warming? We do not know at this point and so it seems hardly
contentious to claim that we should find out. I evaluate a moral argument that we should not try
to find out and a methodological argument that even if we try, we cannot find out. I reject the
first but end up as agnostic on the second, outlining the burden of proof that it creates for
proponents of geoengineering research.
Keywords: geoengineering, ethics
Is geoengineering a feasible, sensible, or practical stopgap
measure for us to have in our arsenal of potential responses
to global warming? We do not know at this point and so it
seems hardly contentious to claim that we should find out.
‘Hardly seems contentious?’ Those are fighting words for a
philosopher. Here I want to present a moral argument that we
should not try to find out and a methodological argument that
even if we try, we cannot find out. I reject the first but end up
as agnostic on the second outlining the burden of proof that it
creates for proponents of geoengineering research.
Of course there is geoengineering and then there is
GEOENGINEERING. Nobody gets very wound up about the
idea of planting trees or painting roofs white as instances
geoengineering—which is not to say that they will necessarily
do much good. The kind of geoengineering that elicits howls
of disapproval is grander than this—it is things like space
mirrors, sulfur injection into the upper atmosphere, and iron
fertilization of the oceans—it is the idea of intervention on
a grand scale. I do not think there is much value in getting
involved in a semantic squabble here. It is enough that we
have at least some proposals on the table that cause disquiet
and others that do not. But I will come back to argue that there
is an important methodological difference between small ‘g’
proposals and big ‘G’ proposals.
1. Moral arguments against geoengineering
Why might it be the case that we should not research
geoengineering? If you think that there are no circumstances
under which we ought to ever implement a geoengineering
scheme, then there would hardly be much point in researching
its feasibility. Many reservations have been raised about
implementing geoengineering schemes of one sort or another,
but these are usually coupled with a reluctant endorsement
of the need for more, not no, research. Robock (2008a)
has a litany of concerns about who decides, potential misuse,
side effects, uneven effects, and dangerous consequences of
sudden cessation of an intervention. Jamieson (1996) offers
conditions on implementation that would be hard to satisfy
when he proposes that the ‘consequences must be predictably
reliable’ and have ‘no irreversible climate consequences’. Still,
even if Robock and Jamieson support research, when you read
their reservations about, or conditions on, implementation, it is
hard to see how research could ever yield a ‘go’ signal. All
science and technology faces the kinds of concerns Robock
raises about control and consequences. (From the beginning,
the scientific enterprise has been a struggle between nurturing
and controlling the interests that drive the enterprise.) And
no science or technology could be implemented if Jamieson’s
condition of predictably reliable consequences was taken
seriously. (All science involves a trade-off between risks and
returns without the luxury of full knowledge of either.) These
kinds of considerations support the suspicion that there is a
tendency to treat geoengineering as outside the bounds of
normal science and hence subject to a different set of standards.
But what is the argument? Is it a moral argument?
There is an undeniable sense of chutzpah that is hard to
disentangle from talk about geoengineering at a grand scale.
1748-9326/09/045104+03$30.00 © 2009 IOP 1 Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK
Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (2009) 045104 M Bunzl
Gardiner raises the argument that it is more of the same
reckless attitude that got us into the problem in the first place
when he writes that: ‘we could clean it (our planet) up . . .
but so intent are we on continuing our messy habits, that we
will pursue any means to avoid that, even those that imposed
huge risks on others and involve further alienation from nature’
Gardiner (2009) (forthcoming; p 25). While Jamieson writes
that even if geoengineering were successful ‘it would still have
a bad effect of reinforcing human arrogance and the view
that the proper relationship to nature is one of domination’
(Jamieson 1996) (p 332). And yet even if we embrace such
considerations, do they help us resolve the dilemma that we
face? Here we are at a fork in the road. Should we turn left or
right? Which will do less harm? Maybe we should not have
gone down the road that we have traveled as a species. But
pointing that out is not of much help. Perhaps it does help
though. Jamieson and Gardiner would likely argue that faced
with such choices, there is often a short term technological
fix. But in the long run, making choices relying on such
technological fixes would not solve the underlying problem
which is in the end practical not moral—we have to find a
place consistent with the limits of nature. Yet, even if we
were to swear a solemn collective oath to do that, and had the
collective means to follow through on such an oath, we are
still where we are, and why demand that we go ‘cold turkey’?
We still may need to avail ourselves of technical fixes in the
transition for such a transition to even be possible. Why not at
least investigate whether geoengineering is available as one of
those fixes?
2. The permissibility of research
But the idea of taking on such an investigation needs to be
treated with care. For there is a danger of treating it, and all
of science, in an idealized way when it comes to research.
That picture of science places individual creativity at the center
with research as a neutral arbiter. But this picture is strikingly
blinkered when it comes to the sociology of science. We are
too creative to research all of the ideas that we come up with
and the process by which choices are made is far from rational.
But more important, once research programs are chosen,
sociological forces increase the probability that development
will take place. This consideration (which both Jamieson and
Gardiner raise) is not to be confused with arguments based on
moral hazard or the allocation of scare research dollars. Both
of those seem exaggerated worries. Moral hazard is sometimes
raised as a problem at the level of not just implementation and
research, but even talking about geoengineering. But it is hard
to discern why moral hazard should function as a deterrent to
action here any more than it does elsewhere. Governments
regularly sponsor research and programs to counter the effects
of ill advised actions—even their own actions. An amnesty
program for illegal immigrants is designed to offset the effects
of poor border enforcement and in doing so it encourages more
not less challenges to the border. Such programs involve a
balancing act of benefits versus costs, despite the name which
implies some sort of moral judgment. Moral hazard only arises
for geoengineering if you think that research or, if it came to
it, implementation would undermine other actions and lead to
more not less greenhouse gas output. That seems far-fetched
since, at least among policy makers, nobody believes that
geoengineering offers anything but a relatively short stopgap
to buy time for other action. Nor are the funds that would be
needed for geoengineering research large enough relative to the
research budgets of even the United States, let alone the whole
developed world, to create an allocation issue. The worry about
research is something different—more a matter of inertia. It
is the kind of worry that comes to the fore when you look at
the history of research programs like the US missile defense
shield. But if this is a general feature (albeit a dysfunctional
one) of large scale scientific research programs, unless you
think no such research should take place because of it, you need
to produce an argument that geoengineering has some special
exceptional features that make this concern relevant here where
it is not elsewhere.
In fact I do think there is such an argument to be made. It
is not that I think that big ‘G’ geoengineering is unique, but I do
think that it falls into a special class of scientific endeavors that
generate a set of methodological challenges, not as to whether
research should be done but whether it could be done.
3. The feasibility of research
On the standard, if idealized model of science, the road to full
deployment has a number of way stations each of which offer
an opportunity to assess benefit under increasingly realistic
conditions. There is of course a trade-off here. The more
restrictive the realism, the less the risk but also the less our
ability to assess the benefits. Wherever this process starts, be it
in the lab or in a computer model, full scale deployment does
not take place before testing in more limited circumstances—
in scale, strength, or range. So in medicine, even after animal
testing, we restrict the number of subjects exposed and increase
the strength of the exposure in a series of steps. In medicine
we can follow this procedure because of something we take
for granted—our object of interest is reasonably modular
or encapsulated. That is what makes it possible for us to
extrapolate from experimental subjects to the population as a
whole with confidence. The experimental subject is a full scale
representation of the objects of interest. Not all of our scientific
or technical interests allow for full scale representation at the
experimental level, and in that case we have to also be able to
extrapolate to scale with confidence. But what if the object
of your interest is not modular or encapsulated? What do
you do then? For that, after all, is the feature that big ‘G’
geoengineering proposals have in common. They call for
interventions on systems that lack just this characteristic. You
cannot encapsulate part of the atmosphere and it is too complex
to be able to build a realistic non-virtual model at scale. As
such, it is reasonable to ask whether we could ever have a sound
basis for moving to full deployment of any such proposed
intervention. And if not, then why bother to even research such
proposals in the first place?
Before examining this question, we should pause to note
that, at least in some respects, the quandary posed here is
not unique to geoengineering. While it is true that most of
science and technology does deal with modular or encapsulated
systems, some of our interests force us to deal with whole
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Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (2009) 045104 M Bunzl
systems. The most salient examples are instances of what
might be termed ‘bioengineering’—deliberate attempts to
intervene to change the Earth’s biology. Eliminating smallpox
or polio is not possible without operating on a global scale.
But there is a difference here—in these cases we can study
the effects of eliminating them at a local level even if to reach
our goal we have to operate at a global level. Some people
would argue that genetically modified crops represent a global
intervention despite assurances that these can be treated as
local interventions. But here too there is a difference—we
have a wealth of experimental (literally, field) studies to fix the
probability of such interventions ‘going global’.
There are many things about geoengineering that we
could learn from experimentation. But they are restricted to
the practicality of such interventions. In the case of sulfur
insertion, we would need to learn about how to effectively
deploy it as well as its half-life in the atmosphere. But could
we ever have a basis for proceeding to deployment at scale with
confidence?
In a non-encapsulated system in which no scale model
can be built, the only experimental model is to extrapolate
from low dosage to dosage at scale. But extrapolate using
what mathematical model? At least in the case of sulfur
insertion, I think there are two bases for such an answer.
One is theoretical, the other empirical. The theoretical one
depends on arguing a case based on our general knowledge
of atmospheric chemistry. The empirical one depends on our
knowledge of volcanic eruptions that have produced a record of
short duration high density sulfur output. But the case remains
to be convincingly made.
Suppose such answers are forthcoming, and suppose
they support the conclusion that even if we cannot assume
linearity, there is no reason to think there is a significant risk
of discontinuities, let alone runaway states. Could we ever
have the confidence to move ahead by slowly increasing the
insertion dosage? Here I think there is a clear burden of
proof argument for the proponents of geoengineering research.
The great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld distinguishes between
known unknowns and unknown unknowns. At issue here is
not just whether the potential risks of geoengineering involve
known unknowns rather than unknown unknowns, but just
what the scale of those risks is.
4. Conditions on implementation at scale
Suppose this burden of proof is successfully met. Suppose
the research is successfully conducted. Then what? What
constraints should govern implementation? Geoengineering
will have uneven benefits because climate change not only
has global effects but also has local effects (see Schneider
1996, 2008). Moreover, geoengineering itself may even harm
some, making them worse off than they would be with global
warming alone. For example, Robock et al (2008b) have a
model that suggests that sub-Saharan Africa would suffer less
cloud cover with geoengineering and thus be hotter and drier
than it would be with climate change alone. Even if you
prescribe a requirement for collective decision making, what
weight should this likely ‘unfairness’ be given—especially if
those who are hurt are the most far removed from those that
caused and are currently causing the problem? Is this a wrong?
If it is, can it be righted by compensation? Here it helps to
extrapolate from a more mundane and common case. You live
in a village that has voted to take some of your land to build
a road. The road will allow crops to get to market with less
spoilage and that will benefit the village as a whole. But you
will lose land and have less space to plant your crops. The
collective good justifies overriding your wishes and even your
right to control your own land. But that said, it only does so if
it is arrived at democratically, if you can be compensated fairly
for your loss and if there is no less disruptiveway to achieve the
desired good. Here too is a burden of proof on the proponents
of geoengineering.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by NSF grant ATM-0730452.
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