Thoughts about Asilomar 2.2You are now attending Asilomar 2.1

Robert Socolow Princeton University

socolow@princeton.edu

The Asilomar International ConferenceOn Climate Intervention Technologies

March 25, 2010

Tuesday: What response to climate change would you hate to see,

and why?I’d like to create a list at this meeting. Please hand your suggestions to me today, tomorrow, or Thursday.

If not “hate to see,” then “be very anxious about.”

Source of hate or anxiety can be environmental, social, technical…

I’ll report back Thursday evening.

Asilomar 2.2

Hypotheses:

1. Much done here is incomplete.

2. Priorities for Asilomar 2.2 can be explored via “nightmares.” Which have we addressed adequately? Which have we addressed inadequately? Which have we ignored, but want to attend to? Which are a distraction?

In order to know the truth, it is necessary to imagine

a thousand falsehoods.

Sidney Coleman, ca. 1964

Nightmares related to conventional mitigation and adaptation

1. Nuclear weapons proliferate as global nuclear power expands, due to weak international governance, and there is a nuclear war.

2. After wide deployment of CCS is under way, a major escape of CO2 from a reservoir undermines public confidence.

3. Human beings, nearly universally today, have defined the good life in terms of self-realization. Zealots take charge and squelch our exuberance (our appetite for variety, our curiousity about other places)

Mitigation is Not Risk-Free

Therefore, the lowest conceivable greenhouse-concentration targets are not optimal.

Nightmares directly related to geoengineering technology

Forestry to sequester carbon annihilates biodiversity.

A policy is enacted that rewards the maximization of stored carbon, without reference to biodiversity. The result is a forest engineered for carbon storage – as opposed to a forest managed for multiple objectives (or not managed at all) which happens to store carbon.

To those writing governance rules: If the intention is to elicit responses from the private sector, expect responses that follow the letter of the law and that are “creative” where there are no rules.

Example: Fuel economy in cars and the EPA “driving cycle.”

Nightmare: SRM runs a while, then is terminated abruptly.

Rapid disengagement from S-injection might be:

a. deliberate: An adverse side-effect is discovered.

b. unintentional: Loss of capability, political will.

“Coming generations will have to live with the danger of this ‘Sword of Damocles’ scenario, the abruptness of which has no precedent in the geologic history of climate.”

Victor Brovkin, et al., Climate Change, 2008

Nightmare: SRM is launched, predicated on a CDR exit strategy

A role for CDR has been identified: in principle, it provides an exit strategy for SRM,

But won’t the SRM enterprise behave like any other incumbent and resist being phased out?

Nightmares directly related to geoengineering science

Nightmare: All the climate scientists are working on geoengineering.

Dual Use! Clouds and aerosolsForest dynamicsOcean biology

Why are you resisting this framing?

Couldn’t you sell the needed R&D better if you presented it as a benefit on the margin of a program addressing the global imperative of improving our understanding of the Earth?

Nightmare: We are unprepared for the next volcano

Be ready for the next volcano (Granger Morgan)

Nightmare: Geoengineering contributes to the rejection of science as a way of knowing.

Imagine describing environmental problems and formulating and evaluating “solutions” without science.

Cherish the norms of science: open, welcoming of newcomers, cosmopolitan, iterative. These are our jewels.

Nightmares directly related to geoengineering policy

Nightmare: Regulatory spillover stops CCS in its track

More generally, spillover of regulation generated at this meeting and its successors shifts the burden of proof for new technologies, impeding innovation.

Nightmare: Soon, stratospheric aerosol injection is actually used

by a rogue state

… well before international norms are established.

Nightmare: Soon, an unambiguous signal of a climate emergency

An unambiguous emergency is quite conceivable: E.g., the methane concentration soars for five years in a row, and arctic outgassing is identified as the culprit.

SRM seeks to be epinepherin, not Advil. Epinephrine treats an acute allergic reaction. Doctors have epinephrine in their medicine cabinet.

However, Lovelock observes that in this instance we have only 19th century medicine – leeches. We aren’t ready.

Nightmare: Globally coordinated environmental policy is rejected by

the developing world

For a while longer, the industrialized countries will lead.

But the developing world will decide what kind of planet we live on.

There is a nearly comical mismatch between our sense of good intentions and their perceptions of the realities of political power. They say: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Asilomar 2.2 participants: less than 50% from the U.S., greater than 25% from developing countries.

Nightmare: We fail to anticipate conflict over setting the thermostat

Anticipate disputes, if someday the world confronts a choice among end-points of geoengineering.

We should not pretend that the pre-industrial world (the status quo ante) will be universally chosen as the end-point, nor any other world.

Nonetheless, there will be a bias toward retrieving the pre-industrial world. We planted crops where the rain fell and built our cities near rivers and coasts. Sea-level rise means moving inland. Sea-level fall means cities without access to the sea.

Nightmares directly related to geoengineering values

Nightmare: The goal of Earth enhancement is embraced uncritically

Genetic engineering now allows enhancement of the human species (prettier, taller, smarter,…)

Geoengineering will allow enhancement of the planet – notably, the moderation of extreme events:

warmer winters where people want themcooler summers where people want themless severe storms and droughts

See Michael Sandel, The Case Against Perfection. Enhancement can be pursued to excess. The ability to savor the life we have been “gifted” can be lost, as well as the random, the “unbidden.”

sweet spots

Nightmare: Geoengineering is unlinked to awe.

Geoengineering becomes part of the human agenda without linkage to the profound existential questions of human purpose and our place in the natural environment. (Leinen)

A geoengineered world bears almost no resemblance to the world desired by environmentalists, who seek to reduce the influence of humans on other species and ecosystems.

A message to those who are drawing up guidelines

Say up front: Geoengineers must not police themselves.Say this before others say it.

Concede that geoengineering may not be needed. Muddling through is a legitimate alternative.

Anticipate, imagine what could go wrong.The norm is good intentions gone awry.

Measure, evaluate, iterate: Incredibly hard to do.

“Madmen in authority who hear voices in the air are distilling the wisdom of an academic scribbler of some years back.”

John Maynard Keynes

Be very careful.