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The hidden politics of climate engineering

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 876–879 (2019)Cite this article

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Governments disagree even on the current state of climate change engineering governance, as became clear at the 2019 United Nations Environment Assembly negotiations. They must develop mechanisms to provide policy-relevant knowledge, clarify uncertainties and head off potential distributional impacts.

Even as the need to consider CDR and SRM options becomes more pressing, governments (and many non-state actors) have been reticent to discuss them openly. This reticence has been due to concerns about, for example, the so-called moral hazard — the notion that considering CDR or SRM options could dilute critical emissions abatement and adaptation efforts. It could also be that policymakers have been reluctant to signal that traditional forms of climate change mitigation may now prove insufficient1. As such, the intergovernmental politics of climate engineering have been rather opaque with very few public statements or policy negotiations surrounding this issue2.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to O. Corry, J. Flegal, O. Geden, D. MacMartin, A. Parker and J. Pasztor for comments on earlier drafts of this Comment. We are also grateful to Z. Dove and A. Straw for their research assistance. The contribution of S.J. to this Comment was in part supported by a fellowship from the Andrew Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sikina Jinnah, Simon Nicholson.

Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Sikina Jinnah

  2. School of International Service, American University, Washington DC, USA

    Simon Nicholson

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  1. Sikina Jinnah
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  2. Simon Nicholson
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Correspondence to Sikina Jinnah.

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Jinnah, S., Nicholson, S. The hidden politics of climate engineering. Nat. Geosci. 12, 876–879 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0483-7

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