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The Big Bad Fix: the Case Against Climate Geoengineering

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The Big Bad Fix: the Case Against Climate Geoengineering The Case Against Climate Geoengineering Acknowledgements Biofuelwatch, Heinrich Böll Foundation and ETC Group are grateful to all that collaborated in writing and reviewing this report. We would like to give special thanks to Lili Fuhr, Linda Schneider, Anja Chalmin, Holly Dressel, Joana Chelo, Oliver Munnion and Simon Fischer for research and writing support. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the CS Fund and the Rockerfeller Brothers Fund to produce this report. Biofuelwatch, Heinrich Böll Foundation and ETC Group are solely responsible for the views expressed in this report. The original research for this report was done by the ETC Group and Biofuelwatch, with the financial support and collaboration of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Editing by Kathy Jo Wetter and Trudi Zundel Design by Stig First published November 2017 All our publications are downloadable free of charge at: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk www.boell.de www.etcgroup.org Published under the Creative Commons licence: Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives 3.0 BIGTHE BAD FIX The Case Against Climate Geoengineering www.etcgroup.org www.biofuelwatch.org www.boell.de/en Contents 5 Chapter 1 – Geoengineering: The Emperors’ New Climate A New, Environmental Empire; Empire’s Techno-fixes 6 Does the Emperor have Clothes? Empirical Hubris in History 7 A “Climate of the Willing”? 8 The Emperor’s new hose? 10 Safe, fair and ecologically sustainable solutions to the climate crisis 11 Chapter 2 – Geoengineering: The Technologies 12 Box: Three categories of Geoengineering as proposed by geoengineers 14 Land: Geoengineering technologies that target terrestrial ecosystems 15 Oceans: Geoengineering technologies that target marine ecosystems 16 Air: Geoengineering technologies that target the atmosphere 20 Chapter 3 – Case Studies 20 Case Study I: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage 21 Case Study II: Fixing the climate with algae? 24 Case Study III: Ocean fertilization: LOHAFEX, Planktos-Haida-Oceaneos 25 Case Study IV: Ocean fertilization: Korea Polar Research Institute 26 Case Study V: Artificial (Ocean) Upwelling in China 27 Case Study VI: The SPICE experiment 28 Case Study VII: SCoPEx: Stratospheric aerosol injection experiment 29 Case Study VIII: Marine Cloud Brightening in Monterey Bay, California 30 Chapter 4 – The Case Against Geoengineering 30 Mega Scale; Unreliable and high-risk; Environmental hazards; Irreversibility; 31 Exacerbate global power imbalances and inequity; Intergenerational injustice; Justification for climate inaction; Carbon profiteering; Convergence of large-scale emerging technologies; Global control 32 Weaponization; Treaty violation; Diversion of resources, funding and research efforts from real solutions 2 The Big Bad Fix: The Case Against Climate Geoengineering 33 Chapter 5 – Who Is Behind Geoengineering? 33 Old fossils, new frames; The Geoclique 34 Cliques are not good for democracy or science 35 Literature and patents – who owns geoengineering? 36 Research on geoengineering; Multinational research projects 38 National programs 39 The IPCC: normalizing geoengineering? 40 The Climate Merchants 42 War climate: military & geoengineering 43 Conservationist for the Earth... Manipulation 44 Defending Mother Earth: geoengineering and indigenous resistance 46 Chapter 6 – Geoengineering Governance 46 Is it possible to govern geoengineering? The Holy Grail of “negative emissions” 47 A starting point; Geoengineering discussions at the UN 48 Transboundary nature; Research and governance – the chicken and the egg? 49 Is a global consensus possible? Broad societal deliberations must come first 50 Box: A legitimate discussion on geoengineering governance must be: 51 Chapter 7 – The Way Forward 51 A radical realism; The norm is a rejection of geoengineering 52 Maintain and reinforce the moratoria; Stop open-air experiments 53 Work for a ban; Broad societal debates, broad frameworks ; Hands Off Mother Earth! 55 Annex 1 – Geoengineering at the United Nations 60 Annex 2 – Non-governmental initiatives on geoengineering governance 62 Endnotes 77 Glossary of Geoengineering Technology Acronyms 77 About the authors - ETC group, Biofuelwatch and Heinrich Böll Foundation ETC Group Biofuelwatch Heinrich Böll Foundation 3 Preface As a rapidly warming world manifests heat waves, We also need sound, socially-just and culturally-appropriate floods, droughts and hurricanes, geoengineering – strategies to repay our land-carbon debt by vastly, yet carefully, large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s natural restoring natural ecosystems. Avoiding efforts to address the root causes of climate change, and focusing on end-of pipe systems – is being presented as a strategy to geoengineering technologies, is a political choice, not a counteract, dilute or delay climate change without destiny. It says that it is more acceptable to risk irreparable disrupting energy- and resource-intensive economies. harm to our planet than alter the dominant economic system. Alarmingly, current debates about this big techno-fix It is not a technical or scientific necessity – it is a defence of a are limited to a small group of self-proclaimed experts failed status quo that continues to protect the riches of the reproducing undemocratic worldviews and few. technocratic, reductionist perspectives. Developing ‘The Big Bad Fix’ expands and updates the 2010 report, countries, indigenous peoples, and local Geopiracy. Jointly authored by the ETC Group, communities are excluded and left Biofuelwatch and the Heinrich Böll voiceless. Avoiding Foundation, it offers NGO activists, social movements, policy makers, journalists and As this report details, each of the efforts to address other change agents a comprehensive proposed geoengineering technologies the root causes of climate overview of the key actors, technologies threatens people and ecosystems. change, and focusing on and negotiating fora of geoengineering. Holistic assessments of the technologies It also provides an analysis and history of also show that if deployed they are end-of pipe geoengineering the debate, the various interests shaping highly likely to worsen rather than technologies, is a political it, and case studies on the most important mitigate the impacts of global warming. choice, not a technologies and experiments. It argues for The irreversibility, risk of weaponization, destiny. an urgent and immediate ban on the and implications for global power dynamics deployment and outdoor testing of climate inherent in large-scale climate geoengineering also geoengineering, overseen by a robust and accountable make it an unacceptable option. In 2010, governments in the multilateral global governance mechanism. Global South took the issue to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and achieved a de facto A debate about geoengineering and its governance is moratorium on geoengineering deployment and outdoor needed, but it must be a broad, participatory and transparent experimentation. debate from the grassroots, grounded in international law, built on the precautionary principle and informed by a So why are we now seeing an escalating discourse around rigorous understanding of real, existing, transformative and geoengineering? In short, the “tyranny of urgency” of climate just climate policies and practices. We need a movement of change is being harnessed to push the debate on movements coming together to oppose geoengineering as a geoengineering from academic papers and computer models technofix and false solution to the climate crisis and refocus to climate policy arenas and – even more importantly – to on real changes. A movement that starts with communities outdoor experiments. and civil society organizations. A movement of movements There is an urgency, of course. Post-Paris Agreement, that demands Hands Off Mother Earth! governments must acknowledge that traditional, light-touch 1 December 2017 emission reduction strategies are not enough. We need an honest conversation about radical emission reduction Barbara Unmüßig, President, Heinrich Böll Foundation pathways that transcend mainstream economic thinking. Pat Mooney, Co-founder, ETC Group Rachel Smolker, Co-Director, Biofuelwatch 4 The Big Bad Fix: The Case Against Climate Geoengineering Chapter 1 Geoengineering: The Emperors’ New Climate A New, Environmental Empire Empire’s Techno-fixes Geoengineering has come to mean large-scale, intentional Miracles once conjured by storytellers and conveyed by the human manipulation of climate or Earth systems. Despite a writers of scripture are now the purview of technologists. We long history of discussion within military contexts, today have, in fact, become routinely successful at local level geoengineering is less often discussed as a technology of war ‘miracles’: we can ask a box on our coffee table how to dress a and more often presented as a risky but potentially necessary wound and to order bandages to our door. Sometimes, we can techno-fix for climate change, a prudent insurance even help the blind see, the disabled walk and bring policy in the event of an imminent climate crisis. the seemingly dead back to life. And we have This report details the geoengineering expanded our miraculous capabilities beyond technologies under consideration and The reasons the local to the global: we have learned to describes the actors and the fora planet Earth is on fly across oceans and into the cosmos. contemplating and/or addressing trajectory for climate chaos, We are now expanding our
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