Global Environ. Change 45, 194–202 (2017)

Scientists and engineers are beginning to assess the feasibility of geoengineering interventions, such as removing CO2 from the atmosphere, to complement emissions reductions to moderate climate change. Because these efforts rely on new and unfamiliar technology they have attracted public scrutiny. However, it is not clear what factors determine whether the public perceive geoengineering experiments as acceptable, and what they would consider effective governance.

Rob Bellamy from the University of Oxford, UK, and colleagues conducted deliberative workshops in which participants engaged in informed discussion on geoengineering experiments and how they should be governed. Workshops emphasised either reaching a majority-held decision, a unitary group decision, or promoting individual viewpoints. Although participants in each workshop ultimately converged on a distinct set of preferences, a core theme across workshops was perceived controllability, reflected in a combination of expressed concerns about level of containment, uncertainty of outcomes, reversibility of environmental impacts, and scientific purity or intent. These results suggest that public acceptance of geoengineering research and governance depends on multiple dimensions of controllability that go beyond technical considerations such as experiment scale or location.