The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management

University Of Montana, Missoula MT

Investigators

Abstract

The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering, planetary-scale engineering in response to climate change, is increasingly part of the scientific and public debate. Scientists and politicians around the world are asking if deployment of large scale technologies might be necessary to reduce the effects of global warming while carbon reduction strategies take effect. This project focuses on those geoengineering technologies that manipulate solar radiation, proposals to brighten clouds, enhance terrestrial albedo, engineer sulfate particles for the upper atmosphere, or deploy space mirrors. Because such proposals involve manipulation of Earth?s climatic system at an unprecedented scale and may involve significant risk and uncertainty, they raise challenging ethical issues. Should humans take intentional control of the climate? What level of risk of unintended consequences is acceptable? Given the uneven nature of the winners and losers, would the potential benefits to any one group be allowed to trump the potential harms to another? Does geoengineering distract attention from important mitigation tasks? This project will contribute to deliberations over solar radiation management through an investigation of important questions concerning social and procedural justice, the role of technology in solving environmental problems, risk and uncertainty, and public trust in science. The project is interdisciplinary, combining philosophical and social science research, guided by an advisory panel of geoengineers, climate scientists, and policy experts. Interviews with a diversity of stakeholders from around the world, including marginalized and vulnerable populations, will be integrated with ethical research to produce an analysis of the moral issues that the global community needs to address prior to any decision to proceed with geoengineering. Ethics, biophysical science, and social science will be interwoven in a variety of products (a book, scholarly articles, and an interactive web resource) that engage multiple audiences in a dialogue about the very real ethical concerns raised by the possibility of the unprecedented step of intentionally engineering the climate.