Yale Global Initiative on Climate Change and Public Health Ethics: “Geoengineering for Climate Crisis Mitigation: Accountability, Transparency, and Democracy”

Transcript

• 00:02<v ->Hello everyone, and welcome to the</v>
• 00:07inaugural seminar of the
• 00:12Yale Global Initiative on Climate Change
• 00:14and Public Health Ethics,
• 00:15as a part of the Yale Center for Climate Change
• 00:19and Health.
• 00:21My name is Laura Bothwell,
• 00:22and I'm delighted to welcome you to this seminar,
• 00:26which is also the first in a series of three virtual,
• 00:29or hybrid noontime seminars
• 00:32this term on various topics related to climate change
• 00:35and public health ethics.
• 00:37As you've seen this seminar is being recorded
• 00:39and we'll have about 15 minutes starting at 12:45
• 00:43for questions and answers.
• 00:45It is such a privilege to introduce Stephen Latham,
• 00:48director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.
• 00:51Dr. Latham has a JD and a PhD.
• 00:54He's a fellow of the Hasting Center and teaches bioethics
• 00:58and environmental ethics in the Yale College,
• 01:01the Yale Law School and the School of the Environment.
• 01:04He chairs the Human Subjects Committee at Yale.
• 01:07Co-chairs the Embryonic Stem Cell Research
• 01:10Oversight Committee
• 01:11and does clinical ethics consultation
• 01:13at the Yale New Haven Hospital.
• 01:15He is a former board member and secretary
• 01:17of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities
• 01:20from which he received a distinguished service award
• 01:23in 2010.
• 01:24And today we are so lucky to hear from him
• 01:26speaking about geoengineering for climate crisis mitigation,
• 01:30accountability, transparency, and democracy.
• 01:37<v ->Well, hello everyone.</v>
• 01:40I'm starting my timer,
• 01:41so I will be sure to have some time at the end
• 01:43for some questions.
• 01:46It's a more grand title than I would like actually
• 01:49and I'm not sure how much
• 01:51I'm gonna get to talk about democracy,
• 01:53but I certainly will be talking about accountability.
• 01:59So the topic is geoengineering
• 02:02and there has been in the environmental community
• 02:09a long tradition of opposition to the very idea of engaging
• 02:13in geoengineering as a response to climate change
• 02:17for reasons that I'll be addressing later.
• 02:20But I think there is increasingly
• 02:25an awareness that our international efforts
• 02:29to address climate change are pretty feeble
• 02:33and that we are very likely to overshoot
• 02:38the one and a half degree temperature
• 02:42goal that was set in Paris.
• 02:47And many voices are saying that no matter how quickly
• 02:52we manage to adjust the way we produce energy and the way
• 02:57we emit greenhouse gases,
• 03:01it won't be enough to avoid really catastrophic side effects
• 03:05of climate change
• 03:06and that we will need to do some form of geoengineering
• 03:10to get ourselves into a tolerable situation.
• 03:17So let me now talk about a couple of kinds of things
• 03:20that fall under the name of geoengineering.
• 03:24There are two major sort of subgroups.
• 03:26One is just carbon dioxide removal,
• 03:29which comes in many, many forms,
• 03:31which I'll discuss in a second.
• 03:33And the other is solar radiation management,
• 03:37which in one form or another involves
• 03:39in increasing the albedo of the earth,
• 03:41the reflectivity of the earth to bounce back
• 03:45some of the sun's energy and heat
• 03:48in order to lower the temperature of the world.
• 03:54I'll say first something about
• 03:56carbon dioxide removal methods.
• 03:59The one that we've all heard about is, of course,
• 04:01planting, reforestation and afforestation,
• 04:04the planting of different kinds of crops
• 04:08that will absorb carbon and so on,
• 04:11where there are other already well established methods
• 04:14of removing carbon from the air,
• 04:16things like biochar, or
• 04:20bioenergy energy use with carbon capture and storage, Becks,
• 04:24which involves
• 04:26burning biomass
• 04:28in a controlled way
• 04:30and capturing the carbon from that burning
• 04:32and then storing that.
• 04:34We have plans to increase the amount of carbon
• 04:39that can be sequestered in soils.
• 04:41We have this idea of sinking biomass so deep in the ocean
• 04:46that it will not be able to degrade there,
• 04:50things like growing lots and lots of kelp
• 04:53and then hauling it out to sea and waiting it down,
• 04:56so it sinks to the bottom of the sea
• 04:58and in theory will not release its carbon
• 05:01for many centuries.
• 05:04We have the idea of enhanced weathering,
• 05:06particularly at the seashore that will,
• 05:09where the action of the sea on certain kinds of rocks
• 05:12will capture carbon.
• 05:14The idea of fertilizing the ocean with bits of iron
• 05:17to increase algal growth,
• 05:21which will capture carbon as well and then sink.
• 05:27Oh, and the idea of restoration of our coastal wetlands,
• 05:32which are actually really excellent carbon sinks
• 05:34of themselves.
• 05:36There's quite a wide range of carbon capture techniques
• 05:41and then of course,
• 05:42we have this new-ish idea of direct air carbon capture
• 05:47in factories that
• 05:50withdraw carbon from the air
• 05:52using chemistry of different kinds,
• 05:54there's several different kinds out there now.
• 05:58And then sequester that carbon possibly underground,
• 06:03possibly with other methods.
• 06:08These things are not terribly controversial,
• 06:14most of them,
• 06:15I think there are some issue with the idea
• 06:17of dropping biomass into the sea
• 06:19because there are questions about where it might wash up
• 06:23and how effective it might be.
• 06:26There are several problems with these things,
• 06:29most of them are not terribly scalable,
• 06:32most of them are pretty expensive for the amount of carbon
• 06:37that they'll actually succeed in sequestering,
• 06:40but many of them would be susceptible
• 06:44to pretty much local governance,
• 06:46much of their environmental impact
• 06:48for most of these methods would be local.
• 06:52The business of fertilizing the sea
• 06:55raises some issues about accountability
• 06:58and international accountability.
• 07:00But I think the biggest,
• 07:02one of the biggest problems in this area is with monitoring
• 07:06and reporting and verification because
• 07:09there are a lot of controversies about the way in which,
• 07:14for example, carbon sequestration in plants
• 07:17is being counted, whether reforestation, for example,
• 07:21is really new reforestation that will capture carbon
• 07:26that wasn't going to be captured by forests
• 07:28that were gonna be planted anyway.
• 07:31And there are questions about competing values for land use
• 07:36associated with some of these methods,
• 07:41but these are as a group far less controversial
• 07:45than the solar radiation management varieties
• 07:48of geoengineering because mostly what they're doing
• 07:52is simply trying to remove carbon from the air
• 07:57and the likelihood
• 08:03of having any kind of unexpected disproportionate impact
• 08:09anywhere in the world from these methods is pretty low.
• 08:12Again, the ones that involve the ocean
• 08:14are probably the most controversial of them,
• 08:16but most of these
• 08:21do not pose many difficult governance kinds of issues.
• 08:27We need better monitoring, reporting and verification.
• 08:32And
• 08:34we need probably some rules about how
• 08:38and where carbon is going to be sequestered,
• 08:41especially if carbon is not sequestered
• 08:43in the same location where it's being drawn out of the air.
• 08:48And most of these methods also
• 08:52should involve some kind of involvement
• 08:54of the public in the location
• 08:57where these carbon reduction methods are going to be used.
• 09:03So for example, if you're gonna do enhanced weathering
• 09:05on a shore line by depositing
• 09:10minerals there that will capture carbon with wave action,
• 09:14you'll wanna talk to the people who use that shoreline
• 09:18and you'll want to engage in some kind of public discussion
• 09:23and get the permission from the relevant public authorities.
• 09:27Same thing with carbon sequestration underground
• 09:30in the salt,
• 09:33there's a proposal now to sequester carbon
• 09:35in bottom of fracking mines,
• 09:40those kinds of things should involve local permission
• 09:43and local governance.
• 09:46There are a few kinds of codes
• 09:48of professional responsibility
• 09:50that have been put out there,
• 09:52completely non-binding, just put out by different groups,
• 09:55in one case by single author,
• 09:57there are the Oxford principles,
• 10:02there's the (mumbles) principles for research
• 10:04in climate engineering techniques.
• 10:07And there's a single author code of conduct
• 10:10for responsible geoengineering research
• 10:13and the last two of those are very explicit
• 10:16of calling for public participation.
• 10:19So to the extent that researchers in geoengineering
• 10:24voluntarily choose to follow some of these available codes
• 10:28of research conduct,
• 10:32we will see some public
• 10:35participation
• 10:38and some openness and accountability.
• 10:42All of these principles call for periodic reporting
• 10:47of results and transparency
• 10:50in terms of how well the techniques are working,
• 10:55but there is
• 10:57very little explicitly binding law
• 11:03that deals with any of these methods,
• 11:09in all likelihood,
• 11:14the Framework Convention on Climate Change
• 11:18will be able to come up with
• 11:22some monitoring mechanisms,
• 11:25they are explicitly mentioned in that framework.
• 11:28And there's also explicit mention of the need
• 11:31to govern sequestration locations.
• 11:34So there is some promise of some kind of governance
• 11:37in this area, but again, in general,
• 11:39the is not where the controversy lies.
• 11:42The controversy really lies with solar radiation management.
• 11:48There are a couple of major types
• 11:50of solar radiation management.
• 11:52I'll say a little bit about each of them.
• 11:55First, there is marine cloud brightening.
• 11:59This involves injecting salt possibly from ocean water
• 12:03into the clouds above the sea and brightening them up
• 12:07so that they have greater albedo
• 12:09and will be more reflective.
• 12:12This looks like it would be pretty inexpensive to do,
• 12:16it would involve a fleet of,
• 12:21to have an effect at the global level,
• 12:24we would have to have a fleet of many ships
• 12:27spraying salt into the sky above the oceans.
• 12:30That fleet would have to be mobile because
• 12:34the impact of the sun changes as the seasons change
• 12:38and so on, would wanna position the reflective clouds
• 12:43in places that would have optimal effect
• 12:45on global temperature.
• 12:49It seems to be possibly effective and possibly rather cheap.
• 12:54And especially if the material used is salt water,
• 12:59there don't seem to be that many
• 13:02immediate polluting side effects.
• 13:08Marine cloud brightening also has a great deal of promise
• 13:13as a method of local protection from the sun.
• 13:16So for example, Australia is paying for some research
• 13:19in this area because they believe
• 13:22that they could do marine cloud brightening
• 13:24over the barrier reef to prevent, to lower temperature
• 13:29and lower the amount of sun striking
• 13:31and prevent bleaching of the coral.
• 13:34There's also some possibility that at marine cloud bleaching
• 13:40could be used in the Arctic
• 13:43to prevent certain kinds of runoff and so on.
• 13:49So there's real possibility of marine cloud bleaching
• 13:54being used all around the world
• 13:58and having an effect on global temperature.
• 14:01I'm gonna talk a little bit about
• 14:06downstream effects of that in a moment,
• 14:08but let me first say a little bit about
• 14:11stratospheric aerosol injection.
• 14:13Stratospheric aerosol injection
• 14:16involves putting reflective particle
• 14:18of one kind of substance or another,
• 14:22often sulfur related substances,
• 14:28injecting those into the stratosphere, which is stable
• 14:31compared to the lower parts of the atmosphere.
• 14:34Those particles would remain there for roughly three years
• 14:37and would reflect the suns rays back into outer space.
• 14:47It looks like it would be very inexpensive to do,
• 14:50the total numbers are in 25 to 50 billion dollars
• 14:55to have
• 14:59planetary, wide, global temperature reduction
• 15:05of all of the temperature that has risen
• 15:09because of greenhouse gases.
• 15:13The theory is that
• 15:14you could begin to see global temperatures fall
• 15:17even within one year of doing this aerosol spraying.
• 15:26And that the temperatures could be brought down
• 15:31to sort of pre-climate change level
• 15:34in a matter of a couple of years,
• 15:37but then of course the spraying would have to be maintained
• 15:40to keep the temperature level steady.
• 15:44So it has the promise of being stunningly effective
• 15:48and relatively inexpensive,
• 15:53but it has a lot of scientific kind of safety issues.
• 15:58First, many of the particles that are being thought of
• 16:01as candidate particles
• 16:05for aerosol injection
• 16:09might have the tendency to deplete our ozone layer.
• 16:14Some estimates say that, for example,
• 16:16the closing of the ozone hole
• 16:20would be delayed by about 40 years
• 16:23by the use of this tactic.
• 16:27In addition to that, some of the particles
• 16:30when they fall to earth after that three year initial period
• 16:36might be pollutants.
• 16:39Sulfur is not particularly a problem
• 16:40'cause there's a great deal of that
• 16:42in the atmosphere anyway,
• 16:43but some of the other particles might just cause
• 16:47ordinary particle fallout pollution.
• 16:51Another big worry,
• 16:53and this is a worry both for cloud brightening
• 16:57and for aerosol injection,
• 17:00is this idea of termination shock
• 17:03because neither of these things does anything about
• 17:06the ongoing accumulation of CO2
• 17:09and other greenhouse gases.
• 17:12When they're stopped, if they were stopped suddenly,
• 17:17there would be a big rebound effect
• 17:21and the temperature of the earth is predicted
• 17:24to climb incredibly rapidly
• 17:28if that intervention is stopped all at once.
• 17:33So it would be absolutely necessary to have in place
• 17:38some kind of international agreement about how and when
• 17:43and how gradually to stop the intervention
• 17:47in order to avoid this termination shock.
• 17:49There have been models that have looked at this
• 17:52and said it's not gonna be very hard to do,
• 17:55but it does require international cooperation.
• 18:00Another big problem
• 18:02with both the solar management techniques
• 18:05is that they're both better at controlling temperature
• 18:09than they are at controlling
• 18:13water circulation through the air and in the soils
• 18:16so that the predictions and these are better modeled
• 18:20with the stratospheric aerosol injection.
• 18:23Its prediction is
• 18:27that if we reach an optimal temperature,
• 18:30we will reduce total amounts of rainfall
• 18:34and this reduction is not gonna be uniform
• 18:36across the planet.
• 18:38It would particularly affect monsoon in areas
• 18:41that have monsoon seasons.
• 18:44In other areas it looks like soil moisture,
• 18:49which is what you care about for agriculture
• 18:51would not be that badly affected,
• 18:53even if rainfall reduces,
• 18:55the temperature reduction would
• 18:57make up for the smaller amount of rainfall,
• 19:04but the point is that there would be global winners
• 19:06and losers in terms of
• 19:10potential for interference with agriculture,
• 19:12potential for drought,
• 19:14potential for reduction of the amount of monsoon rains,
• 19:18potential for reduction of the amount of snow pack
• 19:21in some parts of the world.
• 19:25There would be other effects too,
• 19:27the sky would no longer be blue,
• 19:29the sky would be a kind of diffuse white light.
• 19:32This would have effect on agriculture,
• 19:34it would slow down agricultural growth.
• 19:37On the other hand,
• 19:38advocates for this think that having the increased CO2
• 19:43would speed up some kinds of agricultural growth.
• 19:46So the effects are upped to be mixed.
• 19:55So this is
• 19:57extremely controversial,
• 20:02the threat of ozone depletion,
• 20:04the threat of termination shock,
• 20:05and particularly the fact
• 20:07that there would be international winners and losers
• 20:10from solar management,
• 20:13makes it quite controversial.
• 20:17The fact also that it seems like it would be incredibly
• 20:21effective at temperature control
• 20:24and that it's not expensive,
• 20:27raises other really important kinds of governance issues.
• 20:33So to make an obvious point,
• 20:37a single country could do this
• 20:40and affect the entire temperature of the world.
• 20:46There have been many, many different kinds of scenarios run,
• 20:52and there's a big growing literature on governance
• 20:56of this kind of geoengineering
• 20:59in which people trot out all kinds of scenarios
• 21:03of single countries,
• 21:06or all coalition of countries,
• 21:09or a widespread
• 21:12diverse group of climate
• 21:15change activists
• 21:18might actually just do this
• 21:21without any kind of formal permission
• 21:24from the rest of the world,
• 21:25or from the countries that are gonna be most affected by it.
• 21:30And this poses all kinds of threats
• 21:34to the international order.
• 21:39Even if
• 21:41we could come up
• 21:42with international governance mechanisms
• 21:47that would control
• 21:50and
• 21:52manage the use
• 21:57of stratospheric aerosol injection, for example,
• 22:00even if we could do that,
• 22:01there would be serious political issues
• 22:03because different countries are gonna have different views
• 22:08of what optimal temperatures are.
• 22:11For example, there have been some winners
• 22:13in terms of agriculture in particular
• 22:16from the global warming that we've experienced so far,
• 22:20the growing season has increased
• 22:21in parts of the global north, for example.
• 22:24And it may be that
• 22:28less of a temperature reduction
• 22:29would be appealing to those countries that have been winners
• 22:33from the climate change we've so far experienced.
• 22:38So there is this risk of a single state actor
• 22:43changing the entire globe,
• 22:45or of small groups of states doing it,
• 22:49or of even of independent actors doing it.
• 22:54And we have
• 22:56a small
• 22:58story already
• 23:02about this risk of accountability for action in this area
• 23:07in terms of research in the area.
• 23:12Bill Gates has been funding a study at Harvard,
• 23:16which is a trial of
• 23:20aerosol injection, not of sulfur, but of calcium carbonate.
• 23:26He had a plan with this Harvard group
• 23:29in the southwest of the United States,
• 23:31to who loft some balloons
• 23:35which would spray a small amount of calcium carbonate
• 23:38to the stratosphere enough to cover
• 23:42what's been described as about 11 football fields.
• 23:47And to then send up instruments to measure the effect of
• 23:53the reflection, the gains to albedo and so on,
• 23:57just to do a kind of trial run of stratospheric
• 24:02aerosol injection,
• 24:03but pandemic related considerations
• 24:08moved this group to decide
• 24:11that they weren't gonna do the experiment
• 24:12in the southwest of the United States after all
• 24:15and they just kind of up and moved their location to Sweden,
• 24:21they decided they were gonna launch their balloon in Sweden
• 24:26and they didn't ask anyone in Sweden.
• 24:30They didn't get permission
• 24:31from any local authorities at all and
• 24:36the Sami people,
• 24:37the indigenous peoples of the Northern part of Sweden,
• 24:40they're an indigenous group
• 24:42that inhabit the whole polar region,
• 24:44Sweden and Finland and Russia.
• 24:48They heard about this
• 24:53test site movement
• 24:55and even though the first test was just going to be
• 24:59to fly the balloon and test the aerosol injection mechanism
• 25:04and it wasn't actually gonna spread any material
• 25:06into the sky,
• 25:07the Sami objected and wrote a letter to the research group
• 25:13at Harvard and their advisory board and said,
• 25:16"You can't do this, you can't alter the skies above us."
• 25:21They had a wide range of objections to this.
• 25:25At the baseline, their fundamental objection
• 25:29was with the idea of tinkering with nature at all.
• 25:35The idea that
• 25:36their view is that nature is there to be adapted to
• 25:42and that we should not try
• 25:45to manage the atmosphere, or the globe,
• 25:50but they also cited a number of other arguments,
• 25:54especially moral hazard that I'll be talking about
• 25:57in a moment.
• 25:59And they were joined by some environmental groups
• 26:01from Sweden.
• 26:02The Sami people were affected by fallout from Chernobyl,
• 26:09which actually killed a lot of the deer
• 26:11that their whole lifestyle is sort of centered on
• 26:17the herding and management of these Arctic deer herds.
• 26:23Chernobyl killed a bunch of the deer and even today
• 26:26they have to screen deer meat for radiation
• 26:30before they can eat it.
• 26:31So they have a history of being affected by
• 26:37interventions from other countries
• 26:41and they have been very active
• 26:44in terms of trying to reduce climate change,
• 26:47they lobbied Norway to stop investing in fossil fuels,
• 26:52they sent a group to Standing Rock
• 26:54to protest the Dakota access pipeline.
• 26:59So they have been very active in this area
• 27:02and their activity basically shut down
• 27:05the Harvard Gates
• 27:08project, the advisory board got the letter and said,
• 27:12"These objections are serious.
• 27:14They're posing a real political problem for us
• 27:16and so we're not going to do this study yet."
• 27:20And the study is still on hold.
• 27:25Gates also, by the way,
• 27:27is funding direct air carbon capture
• 27:30and he has been funding a seawater project, which is
• 27:35designed to do a cloud brightening.
• 27:39So he is very much a person who has
• 27:42a great deal of resources
• 27:44and he is very much in favor of
• 27:48these technical geoengineering solutions
• 27:53to the climate change problem
• 27:55and here we have an example of him acting
• 27:58with private researchers to do research in this area,
• 28:04in the sky over Sweden,
• 28:05without any governance at all,
• 28:07without any political consultation at all,
• 28:10let alone permission or input from the local people.
• 28:14So this is just one
• 28:17lesson about the possibility of abuse
• 28:25of these kinds of techniques.
• 28:28The biggest objection that most people have to
• 28:32geoengineering is the moral hazard objection.
• 28:36Basically they say, "If we can geo engineer,
• 28:40then we will be less motivated
• 28:43to actually reduce our carbon emissions."
• 28:48People will say to themselves, "Look,
• 28:52we can prevent these dramatic results
• 28:55from temperature change
• 28:57and that means we don't have to worry as much,
• 28:59or we don't have to act as quickly to reduce carbon,
• 29:03lots of problems with that as an outcome, for example,
• 29:07the CO2 would just continue to build up,
• 29:09ocean acidification would continue and so on,
• 29:14but it's more than just a kind of an abstract worry
• 29:17that people will feel less motivated,
• 29:20particularly here in the United States,
• 29:23there is a worry that the same forces that have been funding
• 29:28climate change disinformation
• 29:30and have been slowing us down
• 29:32in terms of changing the way that we produce electricity,
• 29:37might turn and
• 29:40suddenly start funding research
• 29:43and actual interventions in this solar management.
• 29:48And might actually, following the lead of Bill Gates,
• 29:52for example,
• 29:54start touting the benefits of geoengineering
• 29:59as a way to preserve our existing underlying
• 30:05greenhouse gas producing economy.
• 30:08So there's a great deal of worry about this moral hazard
• 30:12and it's probably
• 30:16the biggest single objection to the use of geoengineering.
• 30:21Just last week on the 17th,
• 30:23there was a global group of about 60 climate scientists
• 30:27and some governance scholars
• 30:29who have called for a moratorium
• 30:33and a international non-use agreement
• 30:36on solar radiation management and other geoengineering.
• 30:44And so there is very strong sentiment
• 30:47to try to stay away from these methods.
• 30:56We do have a little bit of existing international governance
• 31:01in this area,
• 31:03like the Convention on Biodiversity
• 31:05to which the US is not a party and it's non-binding,
• 31:08but the Convention on Biodiversity does mention
• 31:15that we should not be using geoengineering methods
• 31:19that would affect biodiversity on the planet.
• 31:28We have a convention on ozone,
• 31:30which would be implicated if it turns out
• 31:35that solar management would start
• 31:36to deplete the ozone layer.
• 31:39And we have the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• 31:43which doesn't directly address this,
• 31:47but which could be mobilized to put some governance
• 31:51and monitoring
• 31:54provisions in place.
• 31:57I recommend to you
• 31:59the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative website.
• 32:04The Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative
• 32:07is basically trying to foment discussions of governance
• 32:13of geoengineering at all levels, at local levels,
• 32:18in national government and internationally.
• 32:21There's also been some international movement toward
• 32:26thinking about international government of geoengineering.
• 32:30So for example,
• 32:32the Paris Peace Forum is creating a global commission
• 32:35on governance risks from climate overshoot
• 32:39that is gonna be put together in the coming year
• 32:42and it's gonna have a lot of global leaders in it,
• 32:45it's gonna be headed by the former head of the
• 32:47World Trade Organization, I believe.
• 32:50The UN General Assembly is actually going to talk
• 32:54about governance of international geoengineering
• 33:00in upcoming meetings.
• 33:01And there has been a resolution that Switzerland
• 33:06intends to reintroduce, it introduced it years ago,
• 33:09but it's going to try again
• 33:12to introduce this resolution
• 33:14on governance to the UN Environment Assembly.
• 33:23So
• 33:24there is a growing recognition
• 33:28of the need for governance in this area.
• 33:34The most important
• 33:36need is research
• 33:40because
• 33:44none of these methods that I've described
• 33:47has been adequately researched at all.
• 33:50For example, the spray tools that would put
• 33:54the salt from ocean water into the clouds
• 33:58have not yet been developed.
• 34:04There's been plenty of modeling,
• 34:07but there's been no kind of in the air studies of any kinds
• 34:13of stratospheric aerosol injection.
• 34:17The Gates thing would've been the first real trial.
• 34:24And it does
• 34:25seem as though,
• 34:29unless
• 34:31we are so worried about the possibility of moral hazard,
• 34:37or about some of the scientific
• 34:41risks of doing these,
• 34:44unless we worried about this
• 34:46that we want entirely to rule out
• 34:50stratospheric aerosol injection,
• 34:53we ought to be doing research on it because
• 34:59it has potential to
• 35:01inexpensively buy us time
• 35:06in terms of lowering the globes temperature.
• 35:10And right now it is really
• 35:12not researched at all,
• 35:16there is some worry
• 35:20that rogue states,
• 35:22or single powerful states could simply start trying to do it
• 35:26on the basis of inadequate research
• 35:29and that would be a big problem.
• 35:31So there really does need to be some kind of regulation
• 35:36of research methods and some kind of international agreement
• 35:40about how and when the research should be done,
• 35:43unless we wanna make the move to simply say
• 35:46we're not going ever to do this
• 35:50no matter how much we overshoot the Paris climate goal.
• 35:57In the research context in particular, though,
• 36:01it's gonna be really important to have local
• 36:03and public participation.
• 36:05We need complete transparency because at the research phase
• 36:10this is gonna just be done,
• 36:11it's not gonna be done at a level
• 36:13where it'll start to affect global temperature,
• 36:17or global rainfall, but it will be done in particular areas
• 36:22over particular populations
• 36:23and it might have local effects on agriculture.
• 36:27It might have local short term effects
• 36:33on water supply and rainfall,
• 36:37air exchange generally.
• 36:39So it seems as if,
• 36:43even to
• 36:45find out more about the real risks
• 36:48of this kind of climate intervention,
• 36:51we need to put in place international rules
• 36:55that we really don't have right now.
• 36:58So I've ended earlier than I thought I would,
• 37:03that's really all I have to say on this subject
• 37:09and I am happy then to open things up for discussion
• 37:14and hear what your questions might be,
• 37:16or what your comments might be.
• 37:18And we also,
• 37:20I know that we already have some questions that were sent in
• 37:24by people at the time that they signed up for this,
• 37:27so I'm happy to entertain those.
• 37:29And I think the way we're gonna do them
• 37:31is we're gonna have you put your questions in the chat
• 37:36and Laura will address them to me, is that the plan, Laura?
• 37:40<v Laura>Yes.</v> <v ->Yeah,</v>
• 37:43or actually I'm gonna slightly modify the plan,
• 37:47Laura, without telling her,
• 37:48which is, since we're a small enough group,
• 37:51I think what you could do is put in the chat
• 37:54the fact that you have a question
• 37:57and then Laura can call on people
• 38:01and you can unmute yourself and just ask your question live.
• 38:05But Laura has some questions
• 38:07that were submitted written as well.
• 38:09<v ->That's great, thank you so much, Steve,</v>
• 38:12for raising so many really challenging points
• 38:16that are difficult to address,
• 38:18but you've really opened an excellent terrain and
• 38:23identified a number of the scenarios
• 38:26in which these questions will be considered in the future.
• 38:32So I'd like to turn to Dr. Dubrow for the first question.
• 38:37<v ->Okay, thanks.</v>
• 38:39<v Stephen>Hi Rob.</v> <v ->Hi Steve.</v>
• 38:41Thanks, it was refreshing to have the seminar
• 38:45without slides, actually (chuckles), that was courageous.
• 38:53I see the moral hazard question has been huge
• 38:56and my direct question to you
• 38:59is whether the fossil fuel industry
• 39:03has been pushing soil management
• 39:05in any ways as a quote, solution?
• 39:09<v ->Not yet that I know of,</v>
• 39:13there is speculation in print that it would happen,
• 39:19but I'm not yet aware of that.
• 39:23The only person I know of
• 39:25who's really been funding it has been Bill Gates
• 39:30and Bill Gates has come in for a lot of criticism.
• 39:38He's funded this direct air capture project
• 39:42that's happening in Canada,
• 39:44where they're actually already
• 39:45sucking a small amount of carbon outta the air
• 39:48and that's great,
• 39:50but he is really in favor of technical solutions and
• 39:56is not that interested in addressing
• 39:59some of the underlying problems of the way
• 40:01that we sort of do business on the planet.
• 40:03And in fact, as Bill McKibben
• 40:06reviewed the Bill Gates climate change book,
• 40:10I think in the Times, but anyway,
• 40:13Bill's review basically pointed out that Microsoft
• 40:17donated tons of money
• 40:20to politicians who are climate change deniers.
• 40:24So Gates seems to be one person
• 40:27who's pushing these technocratic solutions
• 40:31without really wanting to address underlying
• 40:33kind of political realities
• 40:34about how we've gotten into the situation.
• 40:38I have not heard of any funding from fossil fuel industry,
• 40:43or the Koch brothers or whatever it might be
• 40:46of these interventions,
• 40:48but there is worry in print in multiple articles
• 40:52that might be the turn they take
• 40:55if they lose on preventing action on climate change,
• 40:58they might pivot to say, "Here's what we do.
• 41:02Let's just lower the temperature,
• 41:03we could do it in a year, it's cheap."
• 41:08<v ->Thank you, the next question is from Bruce Jennings,</v>
• 41:14and Bruce will be speaking in the seminar series as well.
• 41:19<v ->Thank you very much, Steve, for a very informative</v>
• 41:21and clear presentation for sure.
• 41:25I want to
• 41:28specifically sort of raise a question about
• 41:31the aspect that has been discussed and that you mentioned
• 41:35concerning public participation and deliberation
• 41:41in various approvals of various
• 41:46experimental trials,
• 41:48or even in climate governance more generally
• 41:53because it does interest me
• 41:57in general what we say about participation.
• 42:02But before I turn to that one, I just wanted to also note,
• 42:07I think one of the most,
• 42:08moral hazard thing is very important,
• 42:10but another thing that's very important
• 42:12sort of at the level of
• 42:15culture and framing
• 42:19has to do with this sort of eco modernism
• 42:22Gates type of approach,
• 42:25versus what I would think would be closer
• 42:29to the approach that,
• 42:31the name of this indigenous people, Sami?
• 42:34<v Stephen>Sami.</v>
• 42:35<v Bruce>Yeah.</v>
• 42:36<v ->S-A-M-I, yeah.</v> <v ->Right, so</v>
• 42:39their position,
• 42:41which might be called a sort of eco accommodationist,
• 42:44or adaptationist position if you want to.
• 42:47Anyway, that debate, I think is very important,
• 42:52will the same kind of thinking that got us into this problem
• 42:55in the first place, namely an emphasis on the fact
• 42:58that human beings can do everything that we decide to do
• 43:04get us out of it.
• 43:05And that does seem to me to be a bit of a paradox
• 43:08worth noting.
• 43:09On the participation side, I guess, I just think,
• 43:13or I ask you about some analogies
• 43:17such as the genetic modification of species of mosquito
• 43:23using gene drives,
• 43:25which would lessen the zonanic transmission
• 43:30of some terrible diseases like Zika and others.
• 43:34And the
• 43:36controversy on Florida case
• 43:39that concerned
• 43:43a similar kind of effort
• 43:45to essentially a bioengineer
• 43:49mosquito populations for the sake of human health.
• 43:55The participation experience there was
• 44:00very far from the ideals of deliberative democracy,
• 44:05transparency, inclusion,
• 44:09so I just sort of look at things like that
• 44:12and I see kind of a problematic track record
• 44:16when it comes to public deliberative democracy
• 44:21participation, visa vi biotechnology.
• 44:27I'm not sure why we should be any more optimistic
• 44:29along those lines when it comes to geo technology.
• 44:37<v ->Yeah,</v>
• 44:41I'm proud to say that
• 44:44my bioethics center here
• 44:46funded the early days of Natalie Kofler's project
• 44:51called the Editing Nature,
• 44:52which is now moved to a different university,
• 44:55but she's very concerned with trying to promote
• 44:59more public participation and more transparency
• 45:01around the bioengineering that you're talking about.
• 45:04She's concerned with,
• 45:06there's genetic modification of mosquitoes,
• 45:09but there's also genetic modification of plant life,
• 45:11for example, that might spread.
• 45:16Her whole project
• 45:19is to improve kind of public input
• 45:23and public permission for some of these experiments.
• 45:27But I will say,
• 45:29the reason that she's busy is these things have,
• 45:35the efforts of public participation
• 45:37have not been particularly strong.
• 45:39And I kind of share your pessimism, I mean,
• 45:50I think it is
• 45:51really important as a principle
• 45:57for us to consult with people
• 45:59who are gonna be affected by our research.
• 46:03It's the same kind of thing that we talk about
• 46:05when we talk about research on human subjects
• 46:06in a new population or whatever,
• 46:10but
• 46:15there is kind of a NIMBY problem.
• 46:18You could come up with kind of intervention
• 46:21that everybody wants for the globe,
• 46:23but nobody wants to have done on their soil.
• 46:26So public consultation could turn out to be
• 46:33a real block to methods that actually could help us
• 46:38with climate change.
• 46:40And also the public participation
• 46:42if it's being run by the people
• 46:44who are doing the experiments,
• 46:46is apt to be kind of flimsy and lane on the flip side.
• 46:51So I think you put your finger on a really serious problem.
• 46:58And it's also, once we think about actually
• 47:02implementing any of these things,
• 47:07these are gonna be global changes brought about
• 47:11and there's no way to have a full public participation,
• 47:15except if the whole thing is managed
• 47:18by some sort of United Nations international body,
• 47:21in which case there would be some kind of representation
• 47:27involved.
• 47:28As to your first point,
• 47:31I think of it as kind of the Heidegger objection,
• 47:34Heidegger's essay on technology is all about this idea
• 47:40that we have gotten to where we are
• 47:44by thinking of everything in the whole world
• 47:46as a resource to split open and take the energy out of and
• 47:52he is very skeptical in that essay about the idea
• 47:57that all of the kinds of social and other problems
• 48:01that this technological attitude have engendered
• 48:04can be technique out of.
• 48:08So it's just another way to put your point
• 48:12that we should be skeptical that we can
• 48:18use the same methods
• 48:20to get out of this climate change problem
• 48:23that got us into it in the first place.
• 48:25I also think that
• 48:28there's something powerful to the notion
• 48:30that we just shouldn't, that it's hubris,
• 48:34not as a matter of actual risk,
• 48:35but just that we shouldn't be engaged in trying to
• 48:39manage the globe, but against that people say, "Well,
• 48:45there's no part of the globe
• 48:46that we haven't already adulterated one way or another.
• 48:52There is no pristine part of the planet,
• 48:55there's no nature that isn't affected by us already."
• 48:59And so
• 49:03maybe geoengineering is not so different
• 49:05from what we've already done by accident.
• 49:08Thank you, Bruce.
• 49:10<v ->Thank you, Bruce and Steve.</v>
• 49:12And into the next question, Steve, you mentioned hubris
• 49:15and I'd just like to ask you very briefly on that point,
• 49:18in biomedicine we have a very long history
• 49:22of hubris leading to subsequent experimentation
• 49:27proving that there are unpredicted adverse events
• 49:31that lead to outcomes that could not have been predicted.
• 49:36And when this is all experimental,
• 49:38I'm wondering if you'd like to speak to that dimension
• 49:40of the ethics as well.
• 49:42<v ->Well, I think hubris is actually used in the letter</v>
• 49:45from the Sami people.
• 49:54I wanna say that there are two ways of thinking about
• 49:56what hubris is,
• 49:58one is
• 50:02that it's just a species of overconfidence,
• 50:04that it's just like,
• 50:05we're sure we can wade into this problem and solve it.
• 50:09And then we learn time and time again that when we do that
• 50:13we get smacked with unanticipated consequences.
• 50:18And so there that when you say that there's hubris,
• 50:21what you're saying is
• 50:26we will bring about unanticipated consequences,
• 50:31but there's another way to think about hubris,
• 50:33which is maybe a
• 50:36deeper, which is
• 50:39it's just inappropriate for us to take that role on,
• 50:44even if we could do it beautifully,
• 50:48it's just wrong for human beings to try to
• 50:55load it over all creation.
• 51:00So and both those kinds of objections
• 51:05are out there and talked about quite a bit
• 51:07in the literature on geoengineering.
• 51:11<v ->Thank you so much.</v>
• 51:12Ethan Sims has the next question.
• 51:16<v ->Thank you very much.</v>
• 51:17So my question is,
• 51:19should we be any more optimistic about relying on
• 51:23governmental organizations to change policy
• 51:26that's going to lead to reduction
• 51:28of fossil fuel consumption,
• 51:30then innovators leading to techniques
• 51:34that lead to temperature reduction?
• 51:38I think your question about hubris is
• 51:41really a question about trusting scientific method
• 51:43and realizing that science is not without consequences.
• 51:47And we do our best to analyze the pros and cons of anything
• 51:50before we take it on.
• 51:52But I fear that we are approaching a true existential crisis
• 51:55where we're going to reach irreversible damage
• 51:58to the planet,
• 52:00significant human health impacts
• 52:02from the rapidly progressive climate change.
• 52:05And if we don't do some sort of mitigation
• 52:08in terms of not just how it impacts us,
• 52:11but reducing the rapid increase spread
• 52:15that we have caused,
• 52:17that we're going to reach an unsustainable future.
• 52:21And I think your point about the sort of UN type body
• 52:26is a good one
• 52:27because I wish there was a global governing organization
• 52:30that had respect
• 52:32and really credibility throughout the world
• 52:37that could take the lead on this,
• 52:38but I'm not sure that there is.
• 52:40So my question is sort of can we afford to ignore that
• 52:45because my optimism is much lower
• 52:47that we're gonna have a governmental solution
• 52:49than that we're gonna have an innovative solution?
• 53:00<v ->Yeah,</v>
• 53:07I don't expect it to be govern,
• 53:09governments that are developing and
• 53:16making these things.
• 53:18I do expect governments
• 53:20who are very concerned about climate change
• 53:22to make pots of money available to private researchers
• 53:25to do these kinds of things.
• 53:26But that's separable from the question of
• 53:30how it should be overseen.
• 53:31I mean, I do expect it to be
• 53:33independent scientific innovators
• 53:35who come up with the best methods
• 53:36for doing this kind of stuff.
• 53:38And I also share your pessimism,
• 53:40I think we're close to an existential crisis.
• 53:43And one thing that's happened in the literature
• 53:46is 10 years ago,
• 53:47if you talked about geoengineering at all,
• 53:50everybody jumped down your throat and said, "No,
• 53:53we can never do that, that's the wrong solution.
• 53:55What we need to do is change the way we produce energy,
• 53:58change the way we construct our buildings,
• 54:01we need to reduce emissions."
• 54:05And we're now at a time when we've so failed to do that,
• 54:11even if we keep our Paris promises,
• 54:14which there's no sign of being able to do,
• 54:18even if we keep those commitments that were made
• 54:20in the Paris agreement,
• 54:23we're headed toward overshooting the temperature goal.
• 54:28So now talk about geoengineering
• 54:31is becoming more and more common
• 54:32and there are people calling out for it
• 54:35at the same time as there are still a bunch of voices
• 54:37saying we shouldn't touch it,
• 54:38particularly the solar management side of it.
• 54:42So that's a long answer, but I share your pessimism,
• 54:46which is why own position
• 54:48is that we should move very quickly
• 54:52to develop governance in the United States
• 54:55and internationally
• 54:58for the research
• 55:00so that we can figure out if these things can help us
• 55:03if we reach a really big crisis in the next decade.
• 55:12<v ->Our next question is to Kyle Ferguson.</v>
• 55:17<v ->Hi, Steve.</v>
• 55:19Thanks so much for the talk.
• 55:22So my question's about the moral hazard argument
• 55:25when it's used as an objection to conducting research
• 55:30on any of these strategies.
• 55:32I'm wondering if you think that argument,
• 55:34the moral hazard argument changes shape
• 55:37when it's directed at field trials
• 55:41as opposed to the sort of computer modeling research
• 55:46that has been taking place for a long time,
• 55:49why would the argument look any different
• 55:52if it's at the field trial phase
• 55:54as opposed to the pre-field trial phases,
• 55:57or why would it be any stronger,
• 55:59or weaker depending on what
• 56:01phase of research it's directed at?
• 56:11<v ->Well, I'm not sure that it is stronger,</v>
• 56:13or weaker as an argument,
• 56:14I think the people who are very concerned with moral hazard
• 56:17probably wish that the modeling had been going on.
• 56:24There's one sense in which it might be stronger though,
• 56:27which is that a field trial might show that this would work,
• 56:34it might definitively show, hey, look,
• 56:37this reflects a lot and it stays up there
• 56:41for the amount of time that we thought it would
• 56:44and if we use this material,
• 56:48we're not seeing any ozone depletion.
• 56:52The right kind of field trial might
• 56:56show that this is seriously available as a tool.
• 57:02And just showing that might be enough to, for example, cause
• 57:09the fossil fuel industry to run out
• 57:12and pour a whole bunch of funding into it
• 57:13and start us down this path.
• 57:15So there's a sense in which a field trial,
• 57:18the moral hazard argument
• 57:21is more urgently directed at field trials for that reason.
• 57:31<v ->Thank you.</v>
• 57:32I'd like to give the final question to Sappho Gilbert.
• 57:37<v Sappho>Hi, it was more a comment than a question, sorry.</v>
• 57:42I just wanted to say thanks to Steve for a great talk
• 57:45and just make mention of the opaqueness
• 57:48and undemocratic nature of the status quo in representation.
• 57:53But yeah, looking forward to a brighter future perhaps.
• 57:56<v ->(laughs) A wider sky.</v>
• 58:04<v ->Thank you, Steve, for a really riveting conversation</v>
• 58:07into everyone for your engagement.
• 58:10This has been fascinating
• 58:12and we'll see what happens (chuckles).
• 58:14<v ->Yes, yes, we will.</v>
• 58:17Thank you everybody,
• 58:18I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to answer
• 58:21all of the questions.
• 58:22And please do note in the chat
• 58:24that Laura's gonna give a talk in this series
• 58:26and Bruce Jennings is gonna give a talk in this series.
• 58:30So please join us again.