"Abstract details

Geoengineering, Preferred Climate States, and Climate Policy in the Anthropocene

J. Horton (1)
(1) Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Abstract content

Many social, ethical, political, environmental, and other objections to geoengineering have been raised since the taboo on public discussion was broken a decade ago. One of the key criticisms, though often unstated, is focused on the fact that geoengineering would necessarily entail making conscious, deliberate decisions about desired climate states. These states might be implicit or explicit, and might be defined in terms of temperature, radiative forcing, rate of change, atmospheric concentration, or some other metric, but choosing to intervene in the climate system is inextricably linked to choosing what the climate ought to be. This feature of geoengineering has been criticized on the grounds that it is arrogant, hubristic, unnatural, corrupt, and/or unwise. There may be merit in such criticisms, yet this line of argument overlooks the reality that, in the Anthropocene epoch, any climate policy is unavoidably premised on a preferred climate state. Mitigation rests inherently on targets, whether general (climate stability, preindustrial, Holocene) or specific (°C, ppm, GtC). From a philosophical point of view, any such target is ultimately arbitrary, in the sense that nature does not endorse one goal over another. The same is true of adaptation. Every potential climate state entails some combination of winners and losers (human and non-human), and the ethical dilemmas this presents cannot be avoided simply by excluding geoengineering as a climate policy option. The mere fact of making decisions about preferred climate states is an insufficient and unsound basis for objecting to geoengineering, and only serves to obscure the tough choices about future climate that must be made whether or not geoengineering is on the policy agenda."
http://www.commonfuture-paris2015.o...tm?Zoom=bca704b28724bff6a5fb3eb8db55392e


From the website:

Our Common Future Under Climate Change
International Scientific Conference
7-10 JULY 2015 Paris, France