Climate Engineering

The science has been clear for decades: the world is warming, rapidly, and we are the cause. Our everyday activities, seemingly innocuous in isolation, are combining to have profound effects on the planet. Despite our knowledge of these profound effects, we as a global community have been slow to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation). Climate Engineering: A Normative Perspective takes as its subject a prospective policy response to climate change, one previously considered taboo. Climate engineering, the "deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment in order to counteract anthropogenic climate change," encapsulates a wide array of technological proposals. One of these proposals in particular-stratospheric aerosol injection-aims to spray aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere, thus reflecting a small portion of incoming sunlight and slightly cooling the globe. While stratospheric aerosol injection is not currently being used to offset climate change, there are active research programs around the world investigating the technology. Daniel Edward Callies here asks important questions that should guide moral and political discussions of geoengineering. Does engaging in such research perhaps lead us down a slippery slope towards inexorable deployment? Could it be that even researching the technology will draw us away from the more important tasks of mitigation and adaptation? Should we err on the side of caution and avoid risky interventions in the climate system altogether? What would legitimate governance of this technology look like? What would constitute a just distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with stratospheric aerosol injection, and, perhaps most importantly, who ought to be included in the decision-making process? This book offers a normative perspective on these and other questions related to engineering the climate, ultimately arguing for research and regulation guided by norms of legitimacy, distributive justice, and procedural justice. Climate Engineering will be an important resource for students and scholars working in ethics, political philosophy, and environmental studies, as well as for a broader group of legal theorists, political scientists, economists, and other social and natural scientists.