Do we need an ethical framework for climate intervention research?
The American Geophysical Union has proposed an ethical framework for climate intervention research and is seeking expert and public input on it. Before I read the details, I've got some questions...
I recently joined the advisory board which will help the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to review its proposed ethical framework for climate intervention research. The AGU had already drafted its proposals when I joined and gave me only a week to comment on their draft before they published it for public comment. I didn’t have the time then and I’ve still yet to carefully read the proposal.
Before I do, I thought it might be useful to lay out the questions that I’ll be thinking about as I review this ethical framework.
Why do we need an ethical framework for climate intervention reseearch?
Climate intervention, also known as geoengineering or climate engineering, can be defined as:
the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth's climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.
Deliberately manipulating the Earth’s climate clearly raises a host of ethical issues, and so it seems reasonable that we should carefully consider these before we develop and use such technologies.
But there are other technologies and areas of research that raise similar issues. We manipulate many environmental processes on large scales for a variety of reasons, e.g., land-use, water management, resource extraction, etc.
Should AGU develop an ethical framework for research into all forms of large-scale environmental manipulation? If not, what is special about applying such manipulation for the purpose of counteracting the effects of global warming that requires an ethical framework?
AGU’s ethical framework will apply to the two sub-categories of climate intervention: Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). SRM and CDR are very different kinds of large-scale envronmental manipulation and counter the effects of global warming in very different ways.
SRM aims to alter the Earth’s energy budget with most ideas aiming to increase the amount of light reflected away from the Earth. By offsetting the radiative effect of elevated greenhouse gases in this way SRM could lower global temperatures and it is hoped that it will also offset many of the risks that will come with global warming.
CDR on the other hand, aims to capture and store CO2, addressing the underlying cause of climate change. In terms of its intended effect, CDR deployed today would have the same effect as a reduction in emissions. What makes it special from an Earth system perspective is that it makes net negative global CO2 emissions possible, i.e., it would enable us to drive CO2 concentrations down and help to undo their long-term impact on the climate.
While SRM and CDR are clearly very different classes of intervention, they also cover a diverse range of activities that each raise distinct issues.
SRM includes:
Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) - an idea that has very high leverage and is global in scope, potentially enabling a single nation to control the global temperature.
Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) and Cirrus Cloud Thinning (CCT) - regional interventions that would modify local clouds properties to produce a cooling. Deployed over a large enough area these could have a global cooling effect and they may also enable some degree of weather control1.
Local albedo modifications - arguably proposals to increase the albedo of urban, crop or other surfaces count as SRM, though it would be hard to scale them up sufficiently to affect global climate.
CDR covers many very different ideas, here’s a few:
Ocean Iron Fertilization - An idea to add iron, a trace mineral needed for plankton growth, to areas of the ocean that lack it to spur plankton blooms in the hopes some of the carbon captured by these planktons is stored in the deep ocean.
Enhanced weathering - the weathering of certain rocks captures CO2 and stores it on geological timescales, but this could be sped up by grinding and spreading such rocks.
Direct Air Capture (DAC) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) - industrial facilities could be built to extract CO2 from the ambient air, purify it, and then pump it into deep geological reservoirs for storage.
Bio-energy with CCS (BECCS) - Growing biofuels which would capture CO2 by photosynthesis and then burning in a power plant fitted with CCS would have the net effect of capturing and storing CO2.
Afforestation and land management for carbon storage - Planting trees or other species in a place where they were not growing would capture and store CO2 in biomass.
What is true of all SRM and CDR technologies, e.g., of both SAI and afforestation, that means that research into these topics should be covered by the same ethical framework?
There are a range of environmental interventions that do not fall under the category of climate intervention but that raise similar issues to specific forms of climate intervention, for example:
Cloud seeding for the purpose of encouraging rainfall or suppressing hail VS. cirrus cloud thinning.
Applying fertilizers and other treatments to fields VS. spreading crushed rocks over the same fields for the purpose of enhanced weathering.
Land management for the purposes of storing flood waters VS. land management for the purpose of storing of carbon.
CCS for the purpose of mitigating the emissions from a fossil fuel power plant VS. BECCS or DACCS.
If other environmental interventions raise similar issues, should they not be treated similarly? And shouldn’t interventions that pose very different issues be treated differently?
It seems to me that each of the pairs of interventions that I listed have much more in common than SAI has with afforestation, or many CDR ideas have with each other. As such, it’ll take some convincing to persuade me that a unified ethical framework for climate intervention is appropriate.
What obligations and duties will this ethical framework place on research into climate intervention?
The history of early medical and social science is filled with horror stories of careless, misguided, and in some cases, downright cruel experiments. This is why medical and social science experiments must undergo ethical review before they proceed. This ethical review constrains academic freedom in these fields and places some burdens and additional costs on research, but it does so with good reason: to prevent harms to the participants in these studies.
If the AGU’s ethical framework results in additional obligations, duties, or other costs being applied to climate intervention research will these constraints on academic freedom be worth it? What harm will be avoided or what good achieved?
Let’s consider a few possibilities:
Avoiding direct environmental hazards,
Providing an opportunity for affected communities to have a say over the development of a technology which could affect them,
Reducing the risk of misundertanding regarding the potential, limits and risks of an intervention, e.g., the idea that SRM would be a silver bullet for climate change.
These are all good things, of course, but the benefits of efforts to advance them would need to be weighed against the costs applied to research. And, a good case should be made as to why similar guidance shouldn’t also apply to similar interventions or to all of AGU’s research.
Should the ethical framework apply equally to all forms of climate intervention research? and if not, how should it be applied to research of different types and research with different purposes?
Research covers a wide range of activities, from commentary and theorizing, through quantiative and qualitative social science, modeling and lab work, to field tests and the deployment of prototypes.
Consider another topic where we might want to apply an ethical framework, human fertility research, and this list of research projects:
Conducting a survey of public opinion on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).
A cell culture study to look at the genetic health risks faced by fetuses produced as a result of three-person IVF.
The development of a tool for the selection of sperm or eggs with specific genetic traits.
The use of three-person IVF to produce a child.
The first is purely evaluative, the second is also evaluative but involves the crossing of an ethical threshold (creating live human cells), the third would not itself cross an ethical threshold but would develop a new capability with significant ethical implications, and the last involves the use of a technology that crosses an ethical threshold.
These different studies clearly raise different issues and so should be treated differently. Climate intervention research projects that seeks to evaluate, develop, test or deploy all raise distinct issues and should be treated differently.
Could this ethical framework become a battleground for political fights over this controversial idea?
Climate intervention is a controversial idea and some researchers believe that research into this topic should be discouraged or prohibited. In fact over 400 researchers have signed on to support the development of a No-Study2 Agreement that seeks to prevent international organizations from even assessing SRM. Other researchers responded to this call, arguing that responsible deliberation and governance requires research and assessment of SRM.
The development of an ethical framework which may place additional obligations, duties or other burdens on climate intervention research could provide an opportunity for those opposed to research to achieve their aims of stifling research into this topic. I am therefore concerned that the deliberations of the advisory board could get pretty contentious as those who support research and those who oppose it clash over the formulation of this ethical framework and any burdens it may place on academic research in this area.
Questions now, answers later
As I said I’ve yet to closely read the ethical framework, it may have good answers to all of these questions. I’ll publish a follow-up post explaining the draft ethical framework and reviewing whether and how it answers the questions I’ve posed.
In the mean-time, if this has tickled your interest, then the draft ethical framework is available online and open to public comments for the next few weeks, so please check it out and let the advisory board know what you think.
FIN
As weather forecasts have some reliability out to ~10 days and the lifetime of these cloud interventions is only a few days, it should be possible to make weather forecasts with and without the intervention and pick between them. This is not possible with SAI as the aerosol particles have a lifetime of a couple of years and can’t be modulated on such short timescales.
They refer to it as a non-use agreement though 4 of the 5 commitments of this agreement would restrict academic freedom so I think it fair to refer to it as a no-study agreement.