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

February 08, 2022

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The inaugural seminar of the Global Initiative on Climate Change and Public Health Ethics, Dr. Latham joined YCCCH to discuss the role of geoengineering to address climate change issues.

January 27, 2022

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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.