Climate Justice and Geoengineering. Ethics and Politics in the Atmospheric Anthropocene ed. by Christopher J. Preston (review)

This thought-provoking collection of essays examines how the potential deployment of climate engineering (CE) technologies could affect matters of global justice. Christopher Preston makes it his priority to underline the stakes associated with the controversial geoengineering debate-a debate that has been ongoing since Paul Crutzen's historical article in Climatic Change (2006). In that article, Crutzen proposed what many consider to be a radical alternative towards reducing CO₂ emissions causing climate change: that is, a way to cool of the Earth artificially.

These technologies are generally referred to as "geoengineering" or climate engineering (CE), and they adopt one of two forms: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could, for example, involve fertilizing the oceans with iron, increasing the level of marine phytoplankton, which use (and thus capture) CO₂ for photosynthesis. SRM, on the other hand, might involve injecting sulphur into the atmosphere, enhancing its albedo and thus reducing radiation from the sun.

Prior to 2006, no climate expert or politician would have dared mention SMR or CDR, so as not to further exacerbate mass reluctance to reducing CO₂ emissions. Preston notes that Crutzen's paper changed all that, but it also raised new questions around the ethics of the potential consequences. First, the effects of these technologies on climate and climate change are still not clear. It is possible that their use could provide relief in some places, while worsening the situation in others. The crux of the problem, therefore, is how to ensure fairness in their implementation. In addition, climate change is a global issue, which in theory should necessitate global action. Concerns about who should be in charge and on what grounds tend to dominate the conversation. Needleless to say, geoengineering involves critical issues of justice that cannot be ignored. As Preston makes clear, the first wave of reactions to CDR and SMR focused solely on the ethical implications of each technique and, most of the time, found moral objections to their usage.

The originality of Climate Justice and Geoengineering is that it sidesteps these analyses by questioning what else is out there. The authors contend that, as "repulsive" as CE might be (p. viii), the absence of global political willingness to reduce CO₂ emissions might engender even more injustices. Is it, then, not immoral to condemn them in the first place? Going one step further, the authors explore actual and hypothetical cases where geoengineering was found to be morally permissible or even obligatory.

Preston has called upon an interdisciplinary team of experts: philosophers, discourse analysts, political scientists, economists, environmentalists, and physicists, who explore diverse and intriguing paths for reflection. Their approach is both expansive and exhaustive, considering topics such as whether the promotion of research on CE necessarily threatens political commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions; whether industrialized countries that find CO₂ reduction so difficult to implement should be exempt; whether compensation mechanisms resolve any injustices that CE might create; and whether CE should be considered a residual obligation to address climate change.

Just as the questions raised by the contributors merge and diverge, so too do the conclusions they reach. Yet, although complex, the underlying messages conveyed in this volume are consistent: The general consensus is that reducing CO₂ emissions is the most effective and legitimate solution to addressing climate change, and that action needs to be taken quickly and vigorously. Industrialized countries cannot avoid taking responsibility and must also work towards reducing their emissions. CE is not the "second best option" after mitigation: talking about it this way is counterproductive and dangerous. Rather, CE should be approached as a supplementary tool providing more time to organize alternative ways of reducing CO₂ emissions. Social and political obstacles that stand in the way of financing research on CE need to be removed, especially because, contrary to what is commonly agreed, CE "offers the best way...