How to Police Geoengineering?

CORNELIA DEAN

U.S. sets record with a dozen billion-dollar weather disasters in one year

When people consider using engineering techniques to counter the effects of climate change, they usually think first about the technical difficulties involved. But a new report points out challenges that may be even more important: regulating the research on such technologies, and their potential deployment.

The report is the result of a collaboration organized by the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific organization, and a variety of other nongovernmental organizations.

In general, geoengineering techniques fall into two categories: steps to capture greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, and efforts to reduce the amount of energy from sunlight reaching the Earth. The latter category, called solar radiation management, is far more controversial and is the focus of the new report, titled “Solar Radiation Management: The Governance of Research.”

Some techniques, like spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to make the Earth shinier and cause it to reflect more sunlight, might be relatively simple to accomplish. But their possible negative consequences are unknown, and once such measures were undertaken, they would have to continue indefinitely because halting them could cause a catastrophic immediate rise in temperature, scientists say. This kind of issue is at the heart of the new report.

“S.R.M.,” or solar radiation management, “has the potential to be either very useful, or very harmful, for people and the planet,” the report says. Figuring out which “depends on being able to govern any future research effectively and responsibly,” it adds.

Among the vital regulatory steps that the report lays out are choosing research projects, establishing requirements for disclosing them, assessing their “scientific and technical competency,” monitoring them and managing liability concerns and potential conflicts. Such oversight will be critical, the report says, because once an S.R.M. research program gets going, it will generate its own momentum.

The regulatory issue “requires much more extensive deliberation,” the report states. But at the moment, it adds, there is no institution or international convention equipped to do the job.

It adds that early concerted action on research governance could promote research while limiting the possibility that countries, companies or individuals might act on their own.

Yet such joint efforts will require a balancing act, the report says. “The more countries involved in S.R.M. governance, the more legitimate the governance arrangements could be, but the less likely and slower the process would be to achieve clear agreement,” it says. “Managing the trade-off between inclusivity and effectiveness will be central.”

Like other reports on geoengineering, the document cautions that it is far too soon to say whether any of the techniques will mitigate the effects of climate change to a meaningful extent, and that conventional efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions must continue.

“Nothing now known about S.R.M. provides justification for reducing efforts” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to adapt to their impact, the report warns.