39698406 Geopiracy the Case Against Geoengineering

Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering i

About the coverThe cover is an adaptation of TheScream by Edvard Munch, painted in1893, shown on the right. Munchpainted several versions of this imageover the years, which reflected hisfeeling of "a great unending screampiercing through nature." One theory isthat the red sky was inspired by theeruption of Krakatoa, a volcano thatcooled the Earth by spewing sulphurinto the sky, which blocked the sun.Geoengineers seek to artificiallyreproduce this process.

AcknowledgementsETC Group is grateful to AlmuthErnsting of Biofuelwatch, NiclasHällström of the Swedish Society forthe Conservation of Nature (thatpublished Retooling the Planet fromwhich some of this material is drawn).

We also thank the Beehive Collectivefor artwork and all the participants ofthe HOME campaign for their ongoingparticipation and support as well asLeila Marshy and Shtig for good-humoured patience and professionalismin the production of this report.

ETC Group gratefully acknowledgesthe financial support of SwedBio(Sweden), HKH Foundation (USA),CS Fund (USA), Christensen Fund(USA), Heinrich Böll Foundation(Germany), the Lillian GoldmanCharitable Trust (USA), Oxfam Novib(Netherlands), and the NorwegianForum for Environment andDevelopment. ETC Group is solelyresponsible for the views expressed inthis document.

Edited by Leila Marshy

Design by Shtig (.net)

Geopiracy: The Case AgainstGeoengineering is ETC GroupCommuniqué # 103

Published in Manila, October 2010

www.etcgroup.org

All ETC Group publications areavailable free of charge on our website:www.etcgroup.org

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used

when we created them.”Albert Einstein

“We already are inadvertently changing the climate.

So why not advertently try to counterbalance it?”

Michael MacCracken, Climate Institute, USA

ETC Group ii www.etcgroup.org

Geopiracy:The Case Against Geoengineering

Overview: Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering

IntroductionDefining geoengineeringBox: Attempts to define geoengineeringBox: Carbon capture and storage

Part I: The Context: Technology to the Rescue

Technology, the UNFCCC and geoengineeringBox: Carbon trade and the squeaky clean development

mechanismHow we got here: the mainstreaming of geoengineeringMedia Blitz: Increase in publications while policy

makers test the watersThe Lomborg manoeuvre: once climate change denier,

now geoengineering devoteeGeoengineering, climate change and agriculture

Part 2: Geoengineering: The Technologies

Box: Proof of principle: Is geoengineering feasible?Solar radiation management (SRM)Box: Geoengineering technologies involving solar

radiation managementCarbon dioxide removal and sequestrationBox: Geoengineering technologies involving CO2

removal and sequestrationWeather modificationBox: Geoengineering technologies involving weather

modificationBox: Geoengineering – a brief technical history

Case study 1: Ocean fertilizationBox: Ocean Fertilization – The Planktos StoryCase study 2: Artificial volcanoes – Reflective particles

in the stratosphereCase Study 3: Cloud whitening – albedo enhancement

below the stratosphereCase Study 4: Burn and bury biocharGeoengineering and Intellectual Property ClaimsBox: A sampling of Geoengineering PatentsBox: Why is Geoengineering unacceptable?

Part 3: Governing Geoengineering or Geoengineering Governance?

Some key momentsThe political economy of researchBox: ABCDE…Won’t you research along with me!UK and US lead geoengineering researchExperimenting with Mother Earth: Small-scale

Geoengineering is an OxymoronMilitary MattersCorporate ConnectionsMacho Mama: Geoengineering’s gender biasThe case for a MoratoriumGovern all technology, not just Geoengineering

technologies

Appendix 1: A selection of existing International Treatiesthat could be violated by Geoengineering experiments

Appendix 2: An International Convention for theEvaluation of New Technologies (ICENT)

Box: Elements of ICENT

Endnotes

Contents

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Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering 1

Overview: Geopiracy: The CaseAgainst Geoengineering

Issue:

Realpolitik, we are advised, recognizes that themultilateral system can’t produce an equitable or effectiveagreement that will mitigate climate chaos: Recognizingthis, concerned governments and scientists have noreasonable choice but to investigate technologicalstrategies that could reduce or delay climate change, atleast until social forces make a practical agreementpossible. Also according to Realpolitik, there is no morehope of achieving a multilateral consensus on re-jiggingthe thermostat than there is of adopting effective targetsfor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, theissue is to create a narrative and construct a governancemodel that will allow a courageous, far-sighted, science-based “coalition of the willing” to justify their unilateralmanipulation of the Earth’s systems. They call itgeoengineering – we call it geopiracy.

At Stake:

First and foremost is the international control ofplanetary systems: our water, lands and air. Second, is thecommitment to climate change mitigation andadaptation. If some rich governments and industry seegeoengineering as a quick, cheap fix for climate change,their money and technologies will be devoted to this“scientific solution” and there will be no resources to helpthe global South fend off the chaos ahead.

Actors:

Leading the pushto advancegeoengineeringare the UK'sRoyal Society andthe US NationalAcademy ofSciences, joinedby counterparts inother countriessuch as Canada,Germany andRussia. Policymakers, who are looking for a way throughthe next election even more than a way out of climatechange, are listening. Discussions are now taking place inParliaments and Congresses looking more for a waythrough the next election than a way out of climatechange. Major energy, aerospace and defence enterprisesare remaining in the background, for now, allowingscientific hubris and conservative think tanks (the veryones that used to deny climate change) to take the heat.Once others deliver the “shock” – that climate chaos isupon us and GHG emissions won’t be reduced in time –industry can deliver the “therapy” of techno-fixes thatwill alter the stratosphere and/or restructure oceansurfaces to ostensibly buy us more time.

‘Bio Wrench’ by tanuki

ETC Group 2 www.etcgroup.org

Fora:

Although the main forum for climate changenegotiations is the United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change, the UN Convention onBiological Diversity (CBD) has been quick to defendmarine biodiversity by establishing a de factomoratorium against ocean fertilization(one form of geoengineering) at itsninth Conference of the Partiesin Bonn, Germany in 2008. The broader issue ofgeoengineering is now firmlyon the CBD’s agenda. Giventhe sorry state of climatechange negotiations andcatastrophic environmentalstate of the planet, bothclimate change andgeoengineering will be on thetable in the lead up to the UN’sConference on SustainableDevelopment (Rio+20 Summit) to be held inBrazil in 2012 where international environmentalgovernance is a key thematic focus.

Policies:

A moratorium on real-world geoengineeringexperimentation is urgent. Additionally, the CBD, theUN Environment Programme (UNEP) and / or the UNGeneral Assembly should seek the advice of the

International Court of Justice to confirmthat geoengineering experimentation

would be a violation of the 1978Environmental Modification

Treaty (ENMOD). TheRio+20 Summit should tacklehead-on the governance ofgeoengineering as well as theevaluation of other new andemerging technologies thatpose grave threats to the

environment and to thehundreds of millions of people

who depend upon its health fortheir livelihoods.

"No matter how great the scientificwizardry, the modern

Archimedes still has no place to stand, no acceptable lever orfulcrum, and no way to predict

where the Earth will roll if tipped."

James Fleming


Introduction

The “proof of principle,” that cumulative, local interventionsin ecosystems can bring about planetary-level effects, is beyonddispute. That’s why we have human-induced climate change.However, another notion is quickly gaining ground: that wecan use geoengineering to purposefully intervene to correctthe unintentional harm we’ve done to our climate.

Geoengineering is the intentional, large-scale intervention inthe Earth’s oceans, soils and/or atmosphere, most oftendiscussed in the context of combating climate change.Geoengineering can refer to a wide range of schemes,including: blasting sulphate particles into the stratosphere toreflect the sun’s rays; dumping iron particles in the oceans tonurture CO2 -absorbing plankton; firing silver iodideinto clouds to produce rain; genetically-engineering crops so their foliage can betterreflect sunlight.

University of Calgary physicist andgeoengineering advocate, David Keith,describes geoengineering as “anexpedient solution that uses additionaltechnology to counteract unwantedeffects without eliminating their rootcause.”1 In other words, geoengineeringuses new technologies to try to rectify theproblems created by the use of oldtechnologies, a classic techno-fix.

Amidst growing public unease and increasingconcentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) countries are feeling the pressure to “bite the bullet.”They either adopt socially-responsible policies to dramaticallycut fossil fuel use and consumption, or they can hope for analternative – a “silver bullet” in the form of an array of techno-fixes that will allow them to maintain the status quo and dodgethe consequences. No surprise, the silver bullet option – mostclearly embodied in the form of geoengineering – is gainingmomentum. Also not surprising: the states in the globalNorth, which are responsible for almost all historicgreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and have either deniedclimate change or prevaricated for decades, are the oneswarming most quickly to the geoengineering option. And theywill have de facto control over its deployment.

Only the world’s richest countries can really muster thehardware and software necessary to attempt rearranging theclimate and resetting the thermostat. Equally unsurprising isthat once the smog clears, the major private sector players ingeoengineering will likely be the same energy, chemical,forestry and agribusiness companies that bear a largeresponsibility for creating our current climate predicament –in effect, the same folks who geoengineered us into this messin the first place.

Opting for geoengineering flies in the face of precaution. Evensome of those who would like to see large-scale investment inthe field are quick to acknowledge that we do not know

enough about the Earth’s systems to risk intentionalgeoengineering, or even to risk real-world

geoengineering experiments. We do notknow if geoengineering is going to be

inexpensive, as proponents insist –especially if/when geoengineeringdoesn’t work, forestalls constructivealternatives, or causes adverse effects.We do not know how to recall aplanetary-scale technology once it has

been released. Techniques that alter thecomposition of the stratosphere or the

chemistry of the oceans are likely to haveunintended consequences as well as unequal

impacts around the world (sometimes referred toeuphemestically as “spatial heterogeneity”).2 As much as

the Industrial Revolution’s unintended “geoengineering”experiment has disproportionately harmed people living intropical and subtropical areas of the world, purposefulgeoengineering experiments are liable to do the same.

The governments that are quietly contemplating fundinggeoengineering experimentation are the ones that have failedto pony up even minimal funds for mitigation or adaptationaction on climate change. Indeed in some quarters the MAGapproach (Mitigation, Adaptation and Geoengineering) isalready being proposed for discussions on climate change.3

These governments will eagerly divert climate change fundingaway from climate change mitigation and adaptation towardgeoengineering if given the opportunity.

Geoengineering is the intentional,

large-scale technologicalmanipulation of the

Earth’s systems, includingsystems related to

climate.


After all, they can spend the money on their own scientistsand corporations to launch initiatives that are more likely tobenefit their part of the world. There is no reason for thegovernments or peoples of most of Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica to trust that the governments, industries or scientistsof the biggest carbon-emitting states will protect theirinterests. In the absence of demonstrable goodwill by the stateslikely to conduct geoengineering, the governments of theglobal South should be more than suspicious. In the absence ofpublic debate and without addressing the inequalities betweenrich countries and poor countries – in terms of both historicalresponsibility for climate change and the potential impacts ofany techniques deployed to address it – geoengineering is anact of geopiracy.

Defining geoengineeringDefining geoengineering is a political act. As newtechnological climate fixes are contemplated, definitionsbecome more complex and more contentious. For example,whether or not carbon capture and storage, biochar, orweather modification are geoengineering technologies is hotlydisputed. At the same time, as governments and multilateralorganizations begin to articulate positions on thesedevelopments, they require more precise definitions. Anyonewho has participated in international negotiations knows thelong and tedious hours spent wrangling over definitions thatcan have far-reaching consequences when they areincorporated into international law or multilateral agreements.

ETC Group defines geoengineering as the intentional,large-scale technological manipulation of the Earth’ssystems, including systems related to climate.

Attempts to define geoengineering

From the US National Academy of Sciences (1992):

Large-scale engineering of our environment inorder to combat or counteract the effects ofchanges in atmospheric chemistry.4

From the UK Royal Society (2009):

...the deliberate large-scale intervention in theEarth’s climate system, in order to moderateglobal warming…Geoengineering can usefully be divided into twobasic ‘classes’:1. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques

which remove CO2 from the atmosphere;2. Solar Radiation Management (SRM)

techniques that reflect a small percentage of the sun’s light and heat back into space.5

From the American Meteorological Society (2009):

Geoengineering proposals fall into at least threebroad categories: 1) reducing the levels ofatmospheric greenhouse gases through large-scalemanipulations (e.g., ocean fertilization orafforestation using non-native species); 2)exerting a cooling influence on Earth by reflectingsunlight (e.g., putting reflective particles into theatmosphere, putting mirrors in space, increasingsurface reflectivity, or altering the amount orcharacteristics of clouds); and 3) other large-scalemanipulations designed to diminish climatechange or its impacts (e.g., constructing verticalpipes in the ocean that would increase downwardheat transport).6

Continued on next page…


Most definitions include some reference to the stated intent ofthe technologies: to combat climate change. But the laudablegoal of combating climate change has no business in thedefinition of geoengineering, as it suggests that technologiesdo, in fact, combat climate change giving the whole suite ofplanet-altering technologies a veneer of respectability theyhave not earned. As U.S. meteorologist and historian JamesFleming points out, an engineering practice that is defined byits scale (geo) should not be constrained by its stated purpose(environmental improvement) or by its currently proposedtechniques (space mirrors) or by one if its perhaps many statedgoals (to counteract anthropogenic climate change): “toconstrain the essence of something that does not exist by itsstated purpose, techniques or goals is misleading at best.”10

From University of Calgary physicist and entrepreneurDavid Keith (2000, 2001):

The intentional large-scale manipulation of theenvironment. Climatic geoengineering aims tomitigate the effect of fossil-fuel combustion on theclimate without abating fossil fuel use; for example,by placing shields in space to reduce the sunlightincident on the Earth. Climatic geoengineering ismarked by four characteristics, scale, intent,technology and countervailing action. Two examplesserve to demonstrate the roles of scale and intent.First, intent without scale: Ornamental gardening isthe intentional manipulation of the environment tosuit human desires, yet it is not geoengineeringbecause neither the intended nor realized effect islarge-scale. Second, scale without intent: Themodification of global climate due to increasingatmospheric CO2 has global effect, yet it is notgeoengineering because it is a side effect resultingfrom combustion of fossil fuels with the aim ofproviding energy services. Finally, such proposals areprimarily technological rather than social and theirmode of action is by counterbalancing some otherhuman impact rather than by minimizing thatimpact. Put simply, geoengineering is a technologicalfix on a grand scale.7

The UK Government (2009):

The government agrees that technologies whichreduce solar insolation or increase carbonsequestration from the atmosphere (excludingcarbon capture and storage) should both beconsidered as forms of geoengineering.8

From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(2010):

The deliberate large-scale manipulation of theplanetary environment. Geoengineering methodscan be largely classified into two main groups: SolarRadiation Management (SRM) and CarbonDioxide Removal (CDR).9

From the New Oxford Dictionary of English (word addedin 2010)

The deliberate large-scale manipulation of anenvironmental process that affects the earth'sclimate, in an attempt to counteract the effects ofglobal warming.

There is also a move, particularly by scientists actively involvedin geoengineering research, to get away from the termaltogether. They argue that the term is too vague, or that itsends the wrong message and that other terms are better fromthe point of view of public relations. The scientists whogathered in Asilomar, California, in March 2010 to look at“voluntary guidelines” for research, for example, not onlystudiously avoided the term geoengineering (the conferencewas on “climate intervention”) but they also sought to rebrand“solar radiation management” as “climate intervention” andcarbon dioxide removal as “carbon remediation.”Furthermore, the statement by the Scientific OrganizingCommittee at the conclusion of the controversial meetingdoes not mention geoengineering (nor for that matter, thevoluntary standards the meeting was convened to develop).


Weather modification is another controversial issue and isoften explicitly excluded from discussions of geoengineering.However, as James Fleming has shown, the contemporaryfascination with climate manipulation has its historical rootsin weather modification11 and we would be unwise to ignorethat history. Some recent reports have excluded weathermodification from their understanding of geoengineering,arguing that it is local and short-term and therefore, unlikegeoengineering, intended to combat climate change.12

This ignores the fact that the history, the intention, thetechnologies themselves, the institutions and the potentialimpacts have a great deal in common with global climateengineering schemes – there are too many overlaps withclimate manipulation and too many potentially dangerousextraterritorial impacts to ignore this whole field of“science.”

Different multilateral bodies may end updefining geoengineering differently.However, most, if not all, would agreethat the following elements areincluded in the definition ofgeoengineering:

Intent: Geoengineering is alwaysdeliberate (even if it may haveunintended impacts). Unintentionaldamage of global environment or climate(ie., global warming) is thus excluded.

Scale: Geoengineering technologies are intendedfor global, or at least large-scale, deployment rather thanlocal application.

Technology: Geoengineering is a technological approach:changing consumption patterns or promoting low-techorganic agriculture, for example, do not qualify althougheither could have a noticeable impact on the climate.

Earth systems: Contemporary discussions aboutgeoengineering almost always invoke the climate crisis (thatis the main rationale for their deployment: desperatemeasures for desperate times) but it is conceivable thatgeoengineering schemes could be employed to manageEarth’s other systems such as the hydrological or nitrogencycles in addition to the carbon cycle. While it may beuseful to refer to the climate for descriptive purposes, itwould be short-sighted to think that climate changemitigation will be the sole purpose of these technologies.

But beyond all these criteria, geoengineering is also aphilosophy and a world view that is heavily coloured by aWestern, male-dominated, narrowly scientific paradigm that

fails to recognize its own epistemic position ofprivilege. As Simon Terry of the Sustainability

Council of New Zealand has pointed out,geoengineering contrasts sharply with the

notion of stewardship, seeing ourecosystems as resources to be optimizedor “fixed” rather than systems to beprotected and restored.13 TheEncyclopedia Britanica defines

engineering as “the application ofscience to the optimum conversion of

the resources of nature to the uses ofhumankind,”14 while the “geo” of course

refers to the Earth. As Indian ecologistVandana Shiva put it recently: “It’s an engineering

paradigm that created the fossil fuel age that gave us climatechange…Geoengineering is trying to solve the problems in thesame old mindset of controlling nature.”15

“Geoengineering is trying to solve the

problems in the same oldmindset of controlling

nature.”Vandana Shiva

The ‘team photo’ at the Asilomar Conference on “Climate Intervention” California, March 2010


Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Carbon capture and storage is a technological process thattraps carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from industrial sources,particularly power plants, by compressing the gas into liquidthen pumping it through pipes to a location underground,where it can theoretically be safely and permanently stored.Advocates predict that CCS technologies, sometimesmarketed as “clean coal,” will one day play a critical role inthe reduction of carbon emissions from coal powergeneration – currently responsible for 40% of total CO2

emissions. Fossil fuel interests are lobbying for CCS to berecognized under the UNFCCC’s Clean DevelopmentMechanism, which would make it eligible for carbon credits.

While CCS is often presented as a partialsolution to climate change, in many cases itis actually used to enhance the extractionof fossil fuels. For example, in the U.S.,companies have injected 10.8 trillioncubic feet of CO2 into oil reserves,increasing oil production by 10%.In Norway (which has a carbon tax,making CCS a more attractivebusiness proposition than elsewhere)some CO2 is used to help extract theremaining reserves of natural gas in theNorth Sea and the rest is pumped deepbelow sea.

There are significant technological and economicchallenges in both elements of CCS – both capture andstorage – that have not been resolved, despite billions ofdollars of public investment by coal-addicted countries.While some technologies to capture carbon dioxide, such asamine scrubbing, have been around since the 1930s, theyhave not been demonstrated on an industrial scale. In fact,some “clean coal” projects have been cancelled because theamount of energy necessary to convert the coal to gas andthen capture the CO2 is as much as the plant would producein the first place.16

Generally, CCS is not considered a geoengineeringtechnology because CCS captures carbon dioxide at source,so, theoretically, it never enters the atmosphere. Mostgeoengineering technologies that fall in the category ofCarbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) are attempts to removecarbon dioxide from the atmosphere after it has beenemitted, thereby actively intervening in the climate. This,for example, is what ocean fertilization and so-calledsynthetic trees aim to do.

However, safe, permanent storage of the CO2 is a majorhurdle, despite assurances from fossil fuel interests and high-

emissions countries, which have set up “independent”institutes to promote CCS.17 Sequestering CO2

– before or after it is emitted into theatmosphere – involves risks. According

to a recent study published in NatureGeoscience that examined fivedifferent CCS scenarios,geophysicist Gary Shaffer found:“Most of the investigated scenariosresult in a large, delayed warming in

the atmosphere as well as oxygendepletion, acidification and elevated

CO2 concentrations in the ocean.Specifically, deep-ocean carbon storage

leads to extreme acidification and CO2

concentrations in the deep ocean, together with areturn to the adverse conditions of a business-as-usualprojection with no sequestration over several thousand years.Geological storage may be more effective in delaying thereturn to the conditions of a business-as-usual projection,especially for storage in offshore sediments. However,leakage of 1% or less per thousand years from anunderground stored reservoir, or continuous resequestrationfar into the future, would be required to maintain conditionsclose to those of a low-emission projection with nosequestration.”18

Safe, permanent

storage of the CO2

is a major hurdle, despite assurances from fossil fuel interests and

high-emissions countries.


Technology, the UNFCCC

and Geoengineering

The United Nations Framework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC) Conference (COP 15) in CopenhagenDecember 2009 was billed as the last chance for internationalnegotiators to agree on a post-2012 Framework that can bringabout significant reductions in GHG emissions. The firstcommitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which entered intoforce in 2005 and set binding emission-reduction targets for37 industrialized countries plus the European Community(so-called Annex 1 countries),19 expires in 2012. A new legallybinding climate agreement was supposed to be sealed in theDanish capital, but the meeting ended in disarray,with hundreds of climate justice activists in jailand exhausted delegates being strong-armedinto supporting a “Copenhagen Accord”that was by and large a face-saving devicefor the USA. The chances of a dealbeing made under the auspices of theUNFCCC in Mexico in 2010 orSouth Africa in 2011 are remote atbest, and the fact that the multilateralforum is unable to deliver a deal is usedby geoenegineers to bolster their case totake another course of action.

Annex 1 countries want to abandon the KyotoProtocol and its notion of “common but differentiatedresponsibilities” (which puts the onus on those who havehistorically been the biggest carbon-emitting countries), andget developing countries to accept a deal that makes everyoneshare the climate debt that wealthy countries have incurred.(It’s difficult not to draw a parallel with the financial bailoutwhere governments spent trillions of public dollars to protectbanks and businesses while allowing more than a billionpeople to go hungry, including an additional 150 millionpeople during the current food crisis – sparked itself, in part,by climate change and agrofuels that are supposed to mitigateclimate change.20)

The UNFCCC’s Fact Sheet, Why is Technology so Important?sums up the Convention’s stance: “Environmentally soundtechnologies are able to provide win-win solutions, allowingglobal economic growth and climate change mitigation toproceed hand in hand.”21 In other words, technology will allowus to continue on our current trajectory without anyreductions in production and consumption – in fact, we aretold, technology will enable us to produce and consume morewithout suffering consequences. Implicit in the faith intechnology is a concomitant faith in the private sector: “Therole of business as a source of solutions on global climatechange is universally recognized,” according to the Fact Sheet.

Rich governments are hoping for quick fixes rather than riskinconveniencing their electorate or offending industry. As

dangerous as geoengineering may sound (and turn out tobe), governments around the world are aware that

some action must be taken (or appear to betaken) quickly. They’re also aware that

carbon-trading schemes won’t put a dentin climate change. Geoengineeringwarrants serious debate and pre-emptive action. The terms“environmentally-sound technologies”(EST) and “innovative technologies”

are ubiquitous in climate negotiatingtexts though there is no explicit

definitions of these concepts in thecontext of climate change mitigation and

adaptation, and no specificity about whichtechnologies are involved.

There are also numerous references to “enabling environment”for technology transfer, covering a wide array of issues,including intellectual property rights (IPRs), incentivemechanisms, and the removal of barriers for technologydevelopment and transfer. IPRs are particularly hotly-contested due to wide disagreement about whether theypromote or inhibit innovations in climate technologies. (SeeGeoengineering and Intellectual Property Claims, below.)

Rich governments are

hoping for quick fixesrather than risk

inconveniencing theirelectorate or offending

industry.

Part I: The Context: Technology to the Rescue


The role of the private sector in the different stages of the“technology cycle” and in financing technology developmentis another contentious issue. Parties have submitted proposalsto leverage private investments in the deployment, diffusionand transfer of technologies. Proposals have also beensubmitted to connect private companies that can providespecific technologies to countries that have already adopted“appropriate measures,” which may become prerequisites fortechnology support. Some developed countries, for example,are proposing the promotion of voluntary technologyagreements and partnerships in cooperative research anddevelopment and large-scale demonstration projects andtechnology deployment projects.

In all cases, the “technology cycle” is understood as: research,development, deployment, diffusion and transfer. There is noprovision for assessment, and no institution charged withevaluating the impacts of different technological options onclimate or people. And there is no attempt to assess whichtechnologies will be most immediately useful, and for whom.In fact, some ideas, like the protection of traditionalknowledge of small-scale farmers through seed-saving and croprotations, which are known to cause no harm to the climate,play second fiddle to approaches such as industrial, high-inputtechnologies like monoculture tree plantations for theproduction of agrofuels (still considered an environmentallysustainable technology) and biochar, i.e., using buried plantbiomass as a carbon sink. It is essential for negotiators at theUNFCCC to keep in mind the full suite of technologies thatmay come into play, including geoengineering technologies.

While the word geoengineering does not (yet) appear in thenegotiating text, as long as geoengineering techniques are notexplicitly excluded, it can be assumed they are encompassedunder the general term technology, and all the provisions on“enhanced action” could therefore apply. Geoengineeringtechniques that “manage solar radiation” (i.e., prevent aportion of sunlight from hitting the Earth) could also beimplied in the temperature reduction targets adopted bystates. Already, some geoengineering advocates (notably oceanfertilization and biochar advocates) have tried to use theConvention to get unproven technologies accredited underthe Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allowscountries with emission-reduction commitments to “move”their obligation to an emission-reduction project in adeveloping country. If a technology as potentially harmful asocean fertilization or biochar becomes accredited under theCDM, the profits to be made by using the oceans and Earth asostensible “carbon sinks” will quickly subordinate the othervital functions they serve – notably, but certainly not uniquely,as food sources.

The CDM has been widely criticized at a conceptual level aswell as for the way it operates on the ground. Indeed, theCDM itself acknowledges “the renewed urgency in 2009 [of ]the task of improving the CDM.”22 One big problem is that itdoes not actually reduce emissions but rather buys the biggestpolluters more time, worsening the climate crisis and allowingmore and more GHGs into the atmosphere. In terms of itsoperations on the ground, common criticisms include: a verysmall number of countries have received the bulk of theprojects;23 local communities are not properly involved indecision making, resulting in social and environmentalhardships; monoculture plantations by agro-forestrycompanies have replaced traditional and more sustainable landuses; large hydro-electric power stations with negative localimpacts have also been certified under the CDM; indigenouspeoples have not been able to properly assert their rights in theprocesses.

Carbon trade and the squeaky cleandevelopment mechanism

The Kyoto Protocol has three “market-based mechanisms”(emissions trading, joint implementation and the CleanDevelopment Mechanism [CDM]), which wereintroduced in the last hours of the Kyoto negotiations.The CDM mechanism provides flexibility to richcountries unlikely to meet their emission reduction targetsdomestically by allowing them to buy “offsets” thatsupport “clean” development in the South that would nothave occurred without offsets (this is known as“additionality”). That means, theoretically, large pollutersin the North will invest in projects in developing countriesin order to compensate for the negative impact of theirown high emissions. The process is overseen by a CDMexecutive board, under the authority of the Conference ofthe Parties of the UNFCCC. The number of CDMprojects has exploded recently, growing tenfold, forexample, between 2005 and 2007 (from 10 to 100proposals a month). More than 4000 projects have beensupported.


While the problems with carbon trading and offsetting arebecoming steadily more apparent, influential states within theUNFCCC are working to increase the scope of suchmechanisms, notably by the adoption and expansion ofREDD programs (Reducing Emissions from Deforestationand Degradation in developing countries) and REDD +,which will expand its activities to include “conservation,sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forestcarbon stocks.” Although the theory behind REDD soundssensible (pay people to keep forests standing rather than to cutthem down), the consequences in fact could be devastating.Firstly, speculation will be accelerated in a race to control thecarbon credits that can be obtained from forests which arenewly valuable as carbon sinks. Secondly, more monoculturetree plantations and biochar will place even greater pressureson scarce land. Thirdly, there are indigenous and forestpeoples as well as local communities living in and near most ofthe world’s forests. Certifiers and consultants from outsidethese communities will be the ones who are empowered to“manage” these forests, alienating the rights of indigenouspeoples over their own land, effectivelyconstituting a new wave of colonization so thatpolluting companies can “purchase” thefresh air produced by their conservation.24

Annex 1 countries are fighting for anambitious role for the internationalfinancial institutions, particularly theWorld Bank, whereas developingcountries are dissatisfied with itsundemocratic governance structure(based on financial contributions),conditionalities and prescriptive economicpolicies that have been so harmful over thepast two decades.

CDM is critical in climate negotiations, and there areefforts to expand its scope to include technologies such asCarbon Capture and Storage (CCS), nuclear power andbiochar. Critical assessment of the CDM needs to include anunderstanding of what existing and new technologies areunder consideration.

How we got here: the mainstreaming of Geoengineering

In a sense, geoengineering has always been on the table as apossible response to climate change. As early as 1965, the U.S.President’s Science Advisory Committee warned, in a reportcalled Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, that CO2

emissions were modifying the Earth’s heat balance.25 Thatreport, regarded as the first high-level acknowledgment ofclimate change, went on to recommend – not emissionsreductions, but a suite of geoengineering options. The authorsof the report asserted, “The possibilities of deliberatelybringing about countervailing climatic changes…need to bethoroughly explored.” They suggested that reflective particlescould be dispersed on tropical seas (at an annual cost ofaround $500 million), which might also inhibit hurricane

formation. The Committee also speculated aboutusing clouds to counteract warming. As James

Fleming, the leading historian of weathermodification, wryly notes: The first ever

official report on ways to address climatechange “failed to mention the mostobvious option: reducing fossil fueluse.”26 In 2005, forty years after therelease of the Science AdvisoryCommittee’s report, everybody,

including – finally – the sitting U.S.president, was talking about global

warming: scientists warned that thetemperature rise on the Arctic ice cap and

Siberian permafrost could “tip” the planet into anenvironmental tailspin, and the U.S. Congress agreed to

study a bill that would establish a national “WeatherModification Operations and Research Board.”

The current debate over the possibility of engineering theEarth’s climate can be traced to a paper27co-authored by thelate Dr. Edward Teller – the Nobel laureate responsible for thehydrogen bomb and one of the most politically influential U.S.scientists in the latter half of the 20th century. Teller lent hissupport to geoengineering when he and two colleaguessubmitted their paper to the 22nd International Seminar onPlanetary Emergencies in Erice, Sicily in 1997. While theauthors did not present their views as being endorsed by theU.S. government, their work was conducted at the LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory, under contract with the U.S.Department of Energy.

“Today's aspiringclimate engineers wildly

exaggerate what is possibleand scarcely consider the

political or ethical implicationsof attempting to manage the

world's climate.”James Fleming


Teller might have been dismissed as a scientist past his prime(he was 89 years old at the time of the Sicilian seminar, afterall) except that another Nobel laureate, Paul J. Crutzen – whowon his Prize for pioneering work on the ozone layer –amplified the scientific shockwave in 2002 when he offeredgrudging support for geoengineering in the journal Nature.28

Since we’re living in the “anthropocene” era when humans areincreasingly affecting the climate, Crutzen suggested, ourfuture “may well involve internationally accepted, large-scalegeoengineering projects.” The same year, Science published itsown article arguing for geoengineering as a legitimateapproach to combat climate change.29

Also in 2002, Teller, along with colleagues Roderick Hyde andLowell Wood, submitted an article to the U.S. NationalAcademy of Engineering in which they argued thatgeoengineering – not reduction of GHG emissions – “is thepath mandated by the pertinent provisions of the UNFramework Convention on Climate Change.”30

In 2005, another high profile climatologist, Yuri Izrael, formervice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeand head of the Moscow-based Institute of Global Climateand Ecology Studies, wrote to Russian president VladimirPutin outlining a proposal to release 600,000 tonnes ofsulphur aerosol into the atmosphere to take a few degrees offglobal temperatures. (In 2009, Izrael actually did the first real-world experiment of this kind. According to science reporterEli Kintisch,31 a follow-up experiment was done which released“smoke” from helicopters at an altitude of 8000 feet [2438meters], and further experiments are planned over ten squarekilometers in Russia. These experiments are both too smalland too low in the atmosphere to provide real data on theclimatic effects on stratospheric aerosols but nonethelessillustrate the seriousness of the issue of countries unilaterallyundertaking atmospheric experiments to test geoengineeringtheories.)

Paul Crutzen returned to the debate in August 2006 when hewrote an “editorial essay” in the journal Climatic Changecalling for active research into the use of “sub-micrometer”-sized sulfate-based aerosols to reflect sunlight into thestratosphere in order to cool the Earth.32 Crutzen, a professorat the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany,opined that high-altitude balloons and artillery cannons couldbe used to blast sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, ineffect, simulating a volcanic eruption.

The sulphur dioxide would convert to sulfate particles. Thecost would run between $25 and $50 billion per year – afigure, he argued, that was well below the trillion dollars spentannually by the world’s governments on defense. Crutzennoted that his cost estimates did not include the human costof premature deaths from particulate pollution. Such tinyreflective particles could be resident in the air for two years.Crutzen willingly acknowledged that his was a riskyproposition and insisted that it should be undertaken only ifall else fails. He went on to add that the political will to doanything else seemed to have failed already.

An editorial in the same issue of Climatic Change by Ralph J.Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and president of the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, also supported further researchon Crutzen’s geoengineering proposals. He told The New YorkTimes in mid-2006: “We should treat these ideas like any otherresearch and get into the mind-set of taking them seriously.”33

By November 2006, NASA’s Ames Research Center hadconvened an elite meeting of geoengineering advocates toexplore options with Lowell Wood presiding. “Mitigation isnot happening and is not going to happen,” the aging physicistreportedly told the group. The time has come, he argued, for“an intelligent elimination of undesired heat from thebiosphere by technical ways and means.” According to Wood,his engineering approach would provide “instant climaticgratification.” From that meeting came the beginnings of acampaign to secure funding for geoengineering techniques –requiring the field to gain respectability – and fast. Thecrowning achievement in the campaign for legitimacy andfunding was the 2009 publication of the UK Royal Society’sGeoengineering the Climate: Science, governance anduncertainty. In the months leading up to the Copenhagen Conference, theUK House of Commons Committee on Science andTechnology in collaboration with its Congressionalcounterpart in the United States (House of RepresentativesCommittee on Science and Technology) announced jointhearings on the subject of the regulation of geoengineering.Apparently oblivious to how his statement would sound to therest of the world, the UK Committee Chair Phil Willisdeclared: “What better subject than geoengineering -- whereinternational collaboration is essential if we are to explore andunderstand fully its potential -- to provide the backdrop to afirst-of-its-kind collaboration between UK and US scrutinycommittees.”34 The two committees heard from many of thesame witnesses – the majority of whom were male scientistsactively engaged in geoengineering research.


Media Blitz: Increase in publications whilepolicymakers test the waters

To date, current support for geoengineering has come fromscientific and political circles, as well as mainstream media.Once a few prominent climate scientists had endorsedgeoengineering as a scientifically credible endeavor – in print– publishing in the field exploded both in scholarly journals(almost a fivefold increase) and in the popular press (atwelvefold increase), as seen in the graphs below.35 It is nowpolitically correct to talk about geoengineering as a legitimateresponse to climate change: a credibility shift that The NewYork Times called a “major reversal.”36

The failure to reach a meaningful multilateral consensus onemissions reduction at COP 15 in Copenhagen -- despite thelargest mobilization for climate justice in history outside theofficial conference -- offered geoengineers the opportunitythey had be waiting for. Indeed, exhausted delegates were justbeginning to check out of their hotels when Nathan Myhrvoldgave a 30-minute interview on CNN37 extolling the virtues ofputting sulphates into the stratosphere as a solution to globalwarming, and explaining how a 25-kilometre hose held up byballoons could deliver the particles to the right place to reflectsunlight away from the Earth.

Media coverage of geoengineering beforeand after 2002

Scientific articles on geoengineering before and after 2002

Myhrvold is a former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoftand now runs Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC, whichholds patents on geoengineering technologies. Prominentgeoengineering scientists Ken Caldeira and John Latham arelisted amongst the firm’s senior inventors, whom IntellectualVentures supports with funding and business expertise. Thefirm files 500-600 patents every year. Ken Caldeira and DavidKeith jointly manage the “Fund for Innovative Climate andEnergy Research” bankrolled by Bill Gates. Since 2007 theFund has given out $4.6 million in research grants. Some timeafter major media brought attention to the fund’s lack oftransparency,38 a FAQ page was posted on the web site ofDavid Keith’s employer, the University of Calgary.39

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James Fleming, Fixing theSky: The CheckeredHistor y of Weather andClimate Control, ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2010,provides essential historicalbackground as well as acritical commentary oncontemporary debates aboutgeoengineering.


In April 2009, John Holdren, Chief Science Advisor to U.S.President Barack Obama, conceded that the administration isconsidering geoengineering options to combat climatechange.40 The next month, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chuindicated his support for technological solutions to climatechange, including “benign” geoengineering schemes thatwhitened rooftops.41 In June 2009, the National Academies –the body tasked with advising the U.S. government onscientific issues – hosted a two-day workshop on“Geoengineering Options to Respond to Climate Change:Steps to Establish a Research Agenda.”42 (Geoengineering thenfigured prominently in “Advancing the Science of ClimateChange,”43 published in 2010.) Steven Koonin, UnderSecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy, wasinstrumental in preparing a report published in July 2009,which considered the technical feasibility of putting aerosolsulfates in the stratosphere to lower global temperatures.44

Geoengineering is now being studied by the CongressionalResearch Service and the Government Accountability Office,while new funding is being contemplated by the Departmentof Energy.45

On the other side of the Atlantic, the science policyestablishment has also been warming togeoengineering. A high-profile exhibit atLondon’s Science Museum, “Can AlgaeSave The World?” coincided withreports that a senior UK environmentminister was a closet fan of oceanfertilization. In a 2008 lettersubmitted to a geoengineering blog,the anonymous minister wrote that“ocean fertilization, because of it's[sic] enormous potential simply must(I will emphasize the word must) beexplored vigorously…the question is howto do this without engendering publicopposition.”46

The UK Parliamentary Innovation, Science,University and Skills Committee issued a reportrecommending research into geoengineering based on inputfrom its 2008-2009 session.47 This was followed by a moredetailed set of hearings on the topic, leading to a report on theRegulation of Geoengineering in March 2010.48 Early in 2009,the German Minister of Research authorized an oceanfertilization geoengineering experiment in the Scotia Seadespite the existence of a moratorium on the practice that hisown government had helped broker at the UN Convention onBiological Diversity in 2008.49

In April 2009, Portugal’s Ministry for Science, Technologyand Higher Education convened a Chatham House Rulessession on geoengineering.50 In September, the Royal Society –the UK’s national academy of science – followed with thelaunch of its report, Geoengineering the Climate: Science,Governance and Uncertainty,51 giving geoengineering arguablyits biggest credibility boost to date.

The authors of the Royal Society report argued thatgeoengineering is “an insurance policy” – an unsatisfactoryand hopefully distant Plan B, but one that should beconsidered if we find ourselves in a climate “emergency.” Theauthors acknowledge that there are many ways to geoengineerthe planet and admit that little is known about the potentialsocial and environmental impacts. The report recommendsthat governments fund a dedicated, ten-year internationallycoordinated geoengineering research programme (£100million of which would come from the UK government). Thebulk of this research would be in the form of monitoring andcomputer simulations, but the report also recommends fieldtrials for several technologies.

From some perspectives, the report’s insistence thatgeoengineering be understood as “an insurance

policy” may seem prudent, practical and evenprecautionary. But the report’s explicit

endorsement of geoengineering researchand real-life experimentation – and its

unwillingness to reject even the mostoutlandish schemes52 – is troubling.The impetus for the report,according to the Royal Society, wasthe need to equip governments andsociety with an analysis of the

scientific risks and benefits involved.Officials have pointed to the escalating

interest in geoengineering over theprevious several months and insisted that

they felt obliged to take on the task of bringing“rigour” to an increasingly polemical debate.53

Unfortunately (or maybe predictably) the occasion of theRoyal Society report launch was used by several advocates ofthe geoengineering approach as an apt moment to amplifytheir own viewpoints.

“If we could come up with a

geoengineering answer to thisproblem, then Copenhagen

wouldn’t be necessary. We couldcarry on flying our planes and

driving our cars.”Sir Richard Branson, industrialist

and airline owner


Neoconservatives across the Atlantic cooperated to launch ahigh profile report on why geoengineering is cheaper thanclimate mitigation (see “The Lomborg Manoeuvre” below),the UK’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers pipped the RoyalSociety to the post by releasing their own favourable analysisof geoengineering one day earlier and one of the RoyalSociety’s own working group members, Dr. Peter Cox (who isdeveloping a cloud-based geoengineering project that targetsWest Africa) used the release of the report to launch a specialgeoengineering edition of Physics World under the mantra“Time to lift the geoengineering taboo.”54 The result was thatwhatever notes of caution appear in the Royal Society’s reportwere lost under an avalanche of simultaneous pro-geoengineering press releases.

Geoengineering has also recently received attention frominternational agencies such as the World Bank – in its latestWorld Development Report55 – and the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP) inits recent compendium of scientificknowledge published since the lastIPCC report.56 The UNEP suggeststhat the issue of liability vis-à-visgeoengineering must be discussedbut is pessimistic on the prospectsfor any international governance orregulation: “Considering howdifficult it has been to reachagreement on the obvious climatechallenge solutions based oncommon but differentiatedresponsibilities, the uncertaintiesinvolved in geoengineering schemes willlikely prohibit any global agreement ondeliberately interfering with Earth’s Systems.”57

Previous reports of the IPCC have made only cursory andcritical mentions of geoengineering, but its next report willcover the field in much more depth, given geoeengineering’srecent credibility surge and that a number of prominentgeoengineering scientists sit on its panels.

The Lomborg Manoeuvre: once climate change denier, now geoengineering devotee

An odd effect of geoengineering’s mainstreaming has been analignment of the positions of some interest groups that werepreviously diametrically opposed. While some long-timeclimate scientists such as Paul Crutzen and Ken Caldeira claimto have only gradually and reluctantly embracedgeoengineering fearing devastating effects from climatechange, a new and powerful corporate lobby forgeoengineering has emerged in the last two years made up ofpeople whose motivation has never been concern for theenvironment or the world’s poorest people.

In June 2008, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker ofthe House in the U.S. Congress, sent a letter

to hundreds of thousands of Americansurging them to oppose proposed

legislation to address global warming.Gingrich argued for geoengineeringthe atmosphere with sulfates as abetter option to fight climatechange. “Geoengineering holdsforth the promise of addressingglobal warming concerns for just a

few billion dollars a year,” wroteGingrich. “Instead of penalizing

ordinary Americans, we would have anoption to address global warming by

rewarding scientific innovation…Bring onthe American Ingenuity. Stop the green pig.”59

Gingrich is a senior fellow of the American EnterpriseInstitute (AEI) – a neo-conservative think tank promotingfree enterprise and limited government – closely associatedwith the recent Bush administration. AEI has its own full-timegeoengineering project led by Lee Lane, who formerly issuedstrategic advice to the Bush administration. In 2009, Lane andco-author J. Eric Bickel published An Analysis of ClimateEngineering as a Response to Climate Change,60 a reportadvocating adding geoengineering to existing responses toclimate change on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Lane andBickel claimed spraying sea-water into clouds might fix climatechange and thereby add $20 trillion to the global economy.

“If we can be made to believe that

mega-scale geoengineering canstop climate change, then delay [to

reduce emissions] begins to look notlike the dangerous folly it actually is,

but a sensible prudence.” Alex Steffen,

Executive Editor of Worldchanging


The report was published and widely broadcast by BjørnLomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg is bestknown as the self-styled and controversial “SkepticalEnvironmentalist” who has consistently downplayed theexistence and importance of climate change much to the angerof climate scientists. Lomborg is now using his “CopenhagenConsensus Center” and media profile to push forgeoengineering not as a “Plan B” on climate change, but a“Plan A” – the preferred route to cooling the planet.

The “Lomborg manoeuver” – switching from opposing real-world action on climate change to supporting the mostextreme possible action on climate change – is now becomingseemingly de rigueur among industrial apologists, formerclimate change skeptics and “deniers,” especially in the UnitedStates. Besides Lane and Gingrich at AEI, political operatorsat the Cato Institute, the Thomas Jefferson Institute, theHoover Institution, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, theHudson Institute, the Heartland Institute, the InternationalPolicy Network and elsewhere are now increasingly professingtheir faith in the geoengineering gospel. While climatescientists and activists have just begun to debategeoengineering, the topic has been a mainstay of discussion forseveral years now at the Heartland Institute’s InternationalConference on Climate Change, dubbed the annual “climatedeniers jamboree” – with several invited talks andpresentations by geoengineering advocates.

For those who previously doubted (or still do) the science ofanthropogenic global warming, the geoengineering approachshifts the discussion from reducing emissions to an end-of-pipe solution. Once geoengineering is an option, there is nolonger a need to bicker about who put the carbon dioxide inthe atmosphere (or ask them to stop). If we have the means tosuck up greenhouse gases or turn down the thermostat,emitters can continue unabated. At least one commentator hascharged that the wholesale embrace of geoengineering byindustry-friendly think tanks represents a deliberate tactic ofdistraction and delay by the same folks who formerly used oilcompany dollars to discredit the science of climate change. “Ifwe can be made to believe that mega-scale geoengineering canstop climate change, then delay [to reduce emissions] begins tolook not like the dangerous folly it actually is, but a sensibleprudence,” explains Alex Steffen, editor ofWorldchanging.com.61 Indeed, at least one high profile climateskeptic, Julian Morris of the International Policy Network,asserts, “Diverting money into controlling carbon emissionsand away from geoengineering is probably morallyirresponsible.”62

Geoengineering, climate changeand agriculture

While agriculture is rarely discussed in relation togeoenginering, some forms of agricultural production doindeed constitute geoengineering. This is the case, forexample, with biochar, monoculture plantations of genetically-modified trees, or even the engineering of crops to havereflective leaves with an aim to increase the Earth’s albedo.These are high-tech, large-scale attempts to modify the Earth’ssystems.

According to the IPCC, agriculture is the source for 14% ofglobal GHG emissions, with the bulk coming from industrialagricultural production due to the heavy reliance on fossilfuels throughout its supply chain. Furthermore, the globalindustrial food system when taken as a whole (includingtransportation, energy for refrigeration, packaging andmethane from urban waste) is responsible for an astounding44-57% of greenhouse gas emissions.63 Sustainable small-scaleagriculture, in addition to feeding the majority of the world’speople, has a much lighter footprint and can even absorbexcess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.64 Nonetheless, theUNFCCC negotiations have largely ignored the role ofpeasant agriculture and are focusing on how to increase the“productivity” of large-scale, industrial agriculture, and“enhance” its value by exploiting its potential as a carbon sink,especially via fast-growing monoculture crops and biochar.

Commercial breeders of crops and livestock stress yield anduniformity and depend heavily on external inputs. Peasantbreeding, on the other hand, depends on diversity and stressesreliability, resistance to pests, disease, and adverse weatherconditions. As global agriculture encounters climate change,farmers will not only face radically different temperatures andgrowing conditions, but also highly erratic weather that willplace the premium on diversity and flexibility. In other words,large monocultures of genetically uniform plant varieties willbe the most vulnerable to climate change. With the widediversity of crop and animal resources conserved in the plotsof small farmers worldwide, peasant agriculture has to berecognized and supported.


Promotion of small-scale biodiverse and ecological agriculture,especially in the South where the bulk of small-scale farmersare found, is a strategic investment for national governmentsand multilateral institutions to guarantee global food securityand survival of the planet. This does not mean that peasantfarmers have found the answer to climate change and we canall relax. Nothing can lessen the grim reality that agriculture inthe global South is already experiencing the most damagingimpacts of climate change.

But it does mean that peasants must take the lead indeveloping strategies – including decentralized technologicalstrategies – to meet the food and climate crises and they needa supportive policy environment in order for this to happen.This however does not mean abandoning the potential forconventional laboratory research conducted by formal researchinstitutions as a complement to peasant innovations. TheWestern model of science and technology hasdeveloped micro-techniques that can havemacro applications – high-tech advancesthat have applications throughoutmuch of the world. Peasant researchoften develops macro-technologiesfor microenvironments – “wide-tech” – complex, integratedstrategies that are locationspecific. This distinction wasclear at the World People’sCongress on Climate Changeand the Rights of Mother Earth,in Cochabamba Bolivia in April2010, where a working group ontechnology rejected top-downapproaches. The working group, withstrong Southern, indigenous and peasantpartipation, challenged the very notion oftechnology transfer, calling instead for the recognition andrecovery of location-specific ancestral knowledge, inter-scientific and inter-cultural exchanges, free sharing ofappropriate information, an end to patents for climate-relatedtechnologies, and the development of locally adapted andappropriate technologies. The Bolivian government’sSubmission to the UNFCCC negotiations on long-termcooperative action based on these deliberations, unequivocallyrejected “the practices and technologies harmful tohumankind and the environment, including agrochemicals,corporate-controlled seeds and intensive water use, geneticengineering, particularly genetic use restriction technology,biofuels, nanotechnology, and geo-engineering.”65

Genetic engineering, biofuels and synthetic biology firms andresearch groups are all racing to develop “climate-ready crops”that will theoretically sequester carbon dioxide, reflect solarrays, or withstand environmental stresses attributable toclimate change (i.e., extreme weather conditions such as heat,high humidity, salinity and drought). Grown over large areas of plains, prairies and pampas, thetheory is that agricultural crops with one or more of thesetraits could play a useful role in protecting the planet fromclimate change or adapting it to a warming world whilecontinuing to provide food, feed, fuel and fibre.

A 2008 report by the ETC Group66 identified 532 recentpatent applications for crops engineered with “climate-readytraits.” The world's largest chemical companies, which alsocontrol the global seed market (BASF, Monsanto, Bayer,DuPont, Dow and Syngenta) are actively engaged in

developing climate-ready crops, but even moreactively stockpiling patents that monopolize

key traits found useful to confront theclimate crisis.

In 2008, BASF and Monsanto,together with small biotechpartners, controlled two-third ofall these “climate ready” patents.The same year, they entered thelargest agricultural researchjoint venture to date (US$1.5

billion) to develop climate-readycrops. They added another US$1

billion to this giant venture in2010. ETC Group’s new research on

climate ready crops found that therehas been a dramatic upsurge in the number

of patent applications that relate to “climate-ready,” genetically engineered crops. As of July 2010,

there exists 258 patent families that include 1633 patentdocuments related to climate ready crops. Of these, 90 % areheld by private companies and just three companies (DuPont,Monsanto and BASF) account for over two-thirds of the total.The breadth of many patent claims is shocking – in a singlepatent, a company can monopolize dozens of crops.

The implications ofindustrially produced,

genetically engineered climate-ready, synthetic organisms or

bioenergy crops in the hands of asmall number of powerful

multinational companies areserious for both climate change

and food security.


Furthermore, global agriculture is coming under additionalstress as the inevitability of a fossil fuel phase-out becomesapparent. Biofuels are being touted as the “environmental,”“renewable” alternative since they are derived from organicsources such as crops and biomass. Already the impacts of firstgeneration biofuels on food security and poor people’s accessto land have been devastating. Monoculture plantations of oilpalm, sugarcane, jatropha and other biofuel crops havedisplaced local and indigenous communities from their landsin many parts of the world, and have resulted in thedestruction of vulnerable forest ecosystems, decimation ofbiological resources and depletion of water sources.

New threats are emerging under the guise of climate changesolutions and these will further imperil the livelihoods ofsmall-scale farmers and indigenous communities. The biocharlobby, for example, proposes that 12% of anthropogeniccarbon emissions can be sequestered in the soil,67 usinghundreds of millions of hectares of land, quite explicitlyseeking to cash in on the carbon market. Its industrial development will entail an unprecedentedstripping of each last bit of ”biomass” on Earth (see CaseStudy 4) so that its carbon can be stored in soil rather than theatmosphere where it causes warming. Moreover, the emergingfield of synthetic biology proposes to create artifical life formsin addition to re-engineering those that already exist (as inclassical genetic engineering). To cite but one example,hundreds of new strains of algae are being developed in thehopes that one will provide a new source of fuel that willactually sequester rather than secrete carbon. As with biochar,the large scale development of synthetic algae will have vastimplications for land, water, food and livelihoods particularlyin the global South.

The implications of industrially produced, geneticallyengineered climate-ready, synthetic organisms or bioenergycrops in the hands of a small number of powerfulmultinational companies are serious for both climate changeand food security. Certainly, if vast areas of cropland are sownwith genetically uniform plant varieties – especially in tropicaland subtropical areas of intense sunlight – the strategy couldexacerbate genetic erosion and species displacement.

Most significantly, moving crop production onto landsformerly free of industrial agricultural production (such aswetlands, peatlands and forests) will threaten the biodiversityof those ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who livethere. If climate-ready traits outcross to wild varieties or viahorizontal gene flow in the soil, significant ecosystem changescould follow. If the modified varieties require special chemicalapplications, the increase in chemical-use could be detrimentalto local flora and fauna, farmers and consumers.

Sustainable and small farmers’ agriculture is an essential partof the solution to climate crisis and it can´t be ignoredanymore. Peasant and indigenous organizations aredemanding their rights and the recognition of the role theycan play in cooling the planet, but they are the most negativelyaffected by industrial food systems, biofuel land grabbing andother “climate mitigation measures,” as well as by climatechange (caused by industrial civilization). Peasants raised theirvoices in the Bali negotiations, continued in Copenhagen andexpressed their proposals clearly at the ground-breakingSummit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Nevertheless, there is noevidence that wealthy states are listening. The massiveintroduction of proprietary climate-ready crops over vast areasof land will indeed constitute a form of geoengineering. Thisis a form of technological adaptation and given the patentrush on climate-ready crops, a handful of agribusiness andchemical firms are poised to grab not only the lands of small-scale farmers in the name of “feeding the world” but some ofthe billions that will be coughed up by rich countries for“adaptation,” and filtered through developing countrygovernments back to the firms that hold the patents onclimate ready crops.


Geoengineering technologies can be divided into three broadareas: solar radiation management (SRM), carbon dioxideremoval and sequestration, and weather modification. In thissection we first provide an overview of the key technologiescurrently under development, followed by four case studies,with more in-depth analysis, and a concluding section on thelink to intellectual property.

Part 2: Geoengineering: The Technologies

Proof of Principle: Is geoengineering feasible?

Unfortunately, humanity has already proven massive Earthrestructuring to be wonderfully operational. Fill enough wetlands andintroduce crop monocultures in enough fields and the ecosystemchanges. Cut down enough forests and the climate changes. Build upsufficient industrial pollution and the ozone disappears and the smogrolls in. Geoengineering’s “proof of principle” is manifest!

Ten old ways to geoengineer the planet:

• Cut down most of the world’s forests;• Convert savannas and marginal land into monoculture cropland;• Dam watersheds, divert rivers, dry-up wetlands and drain aquifers;• Pump billions of tonnes of industrial pollutants, car exhaust and

other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and soil every year;• Wipe out species and genetic diversity in livestock & crops;• Overuse marginal lands leading to soil erosion and desertification;• Erode the world’s major ecosystems;• Deplete – possibly beyond recall – most commercial marine species;• Condemn half of the world’s coral reefs to extinction;• Pollute almost all of the world’s fresh water reserve.

Ten new ways to geoengineer theplanet:

• Create vast monoculture tree plantations forbiochar, biofuels & CO2 sequestration;

• Contaminate Centres of Genetic Diversity withDNA from genetically engineered crops;

• “Fertilize” the ocean with iron nanoparticles toincrease phytoplankton that theoreticallysequester CO2 or nitrogen;

• Build 16 trillion space sunshades to deflectsunlight 1.5 million km from Earth;

• Launch 5,000-30,000 ships with turbines topropel salt spray to whiten clouds to deflectsunlight;

• Drop limestone into the ocean to change itsacidity in order to soak up extra CO2;

• Store compressed CO2 in abandoned mines andactive oil wells;

• Biannually, blast sulphate-based aerosols intothe stratosphere to deflect sunlight;

• Cover deserts with white plastic to reflectsunlight;

• Float tiny bubbles over the surface of the oceans.


Solar radiation management (SRM) Solar radiation management technologies aim to counter theeffects of greenhouse gases by increasing the radiation ofsunlight back into space. SRM encompasses a variety oftechniques: covering deserts with reflective plastic, usingreflective “pollution” to modify the atmosphere, or blockingincoming sunlight with “space shades.” Common to all thesetechnologies is that they do not influence the concentration ofgreenhouse gases; they are only intended to counter some oftheir effects.

Implications: “Solar radiation management” (blocking or reflectingsunlight) has the potential to cause significant environmentaldamage, including releasing additional greenhouse gases intothe atmosphere, changing weather patterns and reducingrainfall, damaging the ozone layer, diminishing biodiversity,reducing the effectiveness of solar cells, and risking sudden anddramatic climatic changes if the efforts are stopped, eitherintentionally or unintentionally. SRM will not address theproblem of atmospheric GHGs or ocean acidification. Evenmore critically: Who controls the Earth’s thermostat? Whowill make the decision to deploy if such drastic measures areconsidered technically feasible?

Geoengineering technologies involving solar radiation management

Geoengineering technology

Desert covering

Space sunshades

Arctic ice covering

White roofs and pavements or mountaintop painting

“Climate ready” crops

Space mirrors

Large scale land-usechange/rainwater harvesting

Key researchers / advocates

Alvia Gaskill (Environmental ReferenceMaterials, Inc., USA)Roger Angel and Nick Woolf (University ofArizona, USA), David Miller (MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, USA), S. Pete Worden(NASA, USA)

Leslie Field (Stanford University and Ice911Research Corporation, USA), Jason Box (OhioState University, USA)Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon (LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory, USA); EduardoGold (Peru/World Bank)Andy Ridgwell (University of Bristol, UK);agbiotech firms, including BASF, DuPont,Syngenta, Monsanto, Centro de TecnologiaCanavieira (Brazil)Dr. Lowell Wood (Lawrence LivermoreLaboratory, USA), Stewart Brand, (Long NowFoundation, USA) Peter Cox (University of Exeter, UK), RayTaylor (The Global Cooling Project, UK andWest Africa)

Description

Covering large expanses of desert with reflectivesheets to deflect sunlight Trillions of small, free-flying spacecrafts would belaunched a million miles above the Earth to forma cylindrical “cloud” 60,000 miles long, whichshould divert about 10% of sunlight away fromthe planet.Covering snowpack or glaciers in the Arctic withinsulating material or a nano-scale film to reflectsunlight and prevent melting. Painting roofs and road surfaces white to reflectsunlight (low-tech geoengineering)

Includes technologies to increase albedo(reflectivity) as well as large-scale plans to makeplants and trees drought, heat or saline resistant

Putting a superfine reflective mesh of aluminumbetween the Earth and sun

Engineering large-scale changes in watermovements in order to provoke cloud formationto reflect sunlight

Geoengineering technologies involving CO2 removal and sequestration


Carbon dioxide removal and sequestrationCarbon dioxide removal and sequestration are geoengineeringtechnologies that attempt to remove carbon dioxide from theatmosphere after it has been released. Some of thetechnologies use mechanical devices to do so; others modifythe chemical balance in the oceans to stimulate increaseduptake of CO2, while other technologies manipulate speciesand ecosystems to create new forms of carbon ‘sinks.’

Implications: Technologies that intervene in complex ecosystems are likelyto cause unpredictable side effects. The duration and thesafety of sequestration in land or sea (whether throughbiological or mechanical means) are mostly unknown; andmany of these techniques require land/ocean use changes thatwill negatively affect poor and marginalized people. For themost part, these technologies are also energy-intensive. Todate, there is no way to ensure safe and affordable long-termcarbon sequestration.


Ocean fertilization with iron or nitrogen

Biochar

Carbon-sucking machines or air capture and mineralsequestration or synthetic trees

Modifying ocean upwelling ordownwelling

“Enhanced weathering”: adding carbonate to the ocean

“Enhanced weathering”(terrestrial)

Crop Residue Ocean PermanentSequestration (CROPS)Genetically engineered algaeand marine microbes

Key Researchers / advocates

Dan Whaley (Climos Inc., USA); Victor Smetacek (AlfredWegener Institute, Germany); Wajih Naqvi (NationalInstitute of Oceanography, India); Ian S.F. Jones (OceanNourishment Corporation, Australia); Russ George(Planktos Science, USA); Michael Markels (GreenSeaVentures Inc., USA)Johannes Lehmann (Cornell University, USA), Craig Sams(Carbon Gold, UK), Pacific Pyrolysis Ltd (Australia);Biochar Engineering Corporation (US); Carbon War Room(US); ConocoPhillips (Canada); Biochar Fund (Belgium);Alterna Energy Pty Ltd (Canada and South Africa) UKBiochar Research CentreDavid Keith (University of Calgary, Canada), Klaus Lackner(Global Research Technology, LLC, Columbia University-Global Research Technologies, USA), Roger Pielke(University of Colorado, USA and Oxford, UK)

James Lovelock (UK) and Chris Rapley (London ScienceMuseum, UK), Philip W. Kithil, (Atmocean, Inc., USA)

Ian S.F. Jones (Ocean Nourishment Corporation, Australia);,Tim Kruger (CQuestrate, UK); H.S. Kheshgi (ExxonMobil,USA)R. D. Schuiling and P. Krijgsman (Institute of Earth Sciences,Utrecht, Netherlands); Olivine Foundation for theReduction of CO2 (UK)

Stuart Strand (University of Washington, USA)

J. Craig Venter (Synthetic Genomics, Inc., USA); Solazyme(USA); Sapphire Energy (USA); BP (UK); Institution ofMechanical Engineers, (UK)

Description

Adding nutrients to ocean water tostimulate the growth ofphytoplankton in an attempt to promote carbon sequestration indeep sea.

Burning biomass through pyrolysis(in low oxygen environments socarbon is not released) and buryingthe concentrated carbon in soil

Extracting CO2 from the air by usingliquid sodium hydroxide, which isconverted to sodium carbonate, thenextracting the carbon dioxide in solidform to be buriedUsing pipes to bring up nutrient-richseawater to the surface to coolsurface waters and enhance oceansequestration of CO2

Increasing ocean alkalinity in orderto increase carbon uptake

Controlling levels of atmosphericCO2 by spreading fine-powderedolivine (magnesium iron silicate) onfarmland or forestlandStoring carbon by dumping tree logsor biomass into seawater Engineering communities ofsynthetic microbes and algae tosequester higher levels of carbondioxide, either for altering oceancommunities or for use in closedponds, or even to cover buildings


Weather modificationThe idea that humans might intentionally control the weatherhas a long history reaching back to indigenous rain dances andthe lighting of fires. Since the 1830s, governments and privatecompanies have attempted to apply technological know-howto produce precipitation or restrain storms by alteringlandforms, burning forests and dropping chemicals into clouds– both for military and agricultural purposes. As climatechange ushers in more frequent extreme weather eventsranging from drought to tropical storms, attempts to controlweather are now witnessing a resurgence. Weathermodification is a classic ‘end-of-pipe’ geoengineering responsethat addresses neither the causes nor the mechanism of climatechange, but seeks only to alter its outcomes. Weathermodification has also been advanced as an adaptationtechnology for climate change (e.g., for protecting water flowfor hydropower schemes).

Geoengineering technologies involving weather modification


Cloud seeding to increaseprecipitation

Storm modification (eg.,redirecting or suppressinghurricanes)

Key researchers / advocates

Chinese Meteorological Association; Bruce Boe(Weather Modification, Inc., USA)

Searete; Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates(Intellectual Ventures, USA). See patent table.

Description

Spraying chemicals (usually silver iodide) intoclouds to precipitate rain or snow -- alreadypracticed on a large scale in the U.S. and China,despite skepticism about effectivenessAttempting to prevent the formation or affectthe pathways of storms.

Implications: Predicting the weather is difficult; proving the efficacy ofweather interventions is even more difficult. Since weather iscomplex and inherently transboundary there may beunwelcome and unpredictable side effects of weathermodification interventions. Attempts to produce rainfall inone location have been regarded by residents of anotherlocation as rainfall “theft,” especially if crops fail in theaftermath of the weather intervention. If interventions such asaltering the course of hurricanes become possible, extensivedamage at another site may no longer be considered “an Act ofGod.” A series of attempts at weather warfare by the U.S.government during the Vietnam War, under the code name“Operation Popeye,” led to an international agreement to banhostile uses of weather modification techniques. The linebetween what is a hostile or peaceful use may be difficult todetermine.


Geoengineering �– a brief technical history

It has taken us some time to realize the influence we canwield over the planet. Back in 1930, Robert Millikan,physicist and Nobel Laureate, insisted there was no dangerthat human activity could do lasting harm to anything asmassive as Earth. Even as he was speaking, chemists wereinventing CFCs – chlorofluorocarbons – the chemicalcocktail responsible for thinning stratospheric ozone at analarming rate, whose use eventually led tointergovernmental policy action in the mid-1980s: TheVienna and Montréal Accords phased out the production ofCFCs.

Likewise, the notion of a technological fix for globalwarming isn’t new. In the 1940s, Bernard Vonnegut (thenovelist Kurt Vonnegut’s brother) – a well-respected meteorologist – discovered thatsilver iodide smoke could cause clouds togive up their rain. His discovery kick-started serious government efforts tomanipulate the environment. Untilthen, cloud-seeding had been thepreserve of crackpots and con artists,but by 1951, 10% of the U.S. was saidto be under clouds that had beencommercially seeded. Governments andindustry have a sometimes ignoble historytampering with the weather, including theCIA’s top secret “Project Popeye” rainmakingcampaign that began in 1966 and ran for seven years,conducting 2300 cloud seeding missions over the Ho ChiMinh Trail during the Vietnam War. The goal was to makethe Trail impassable and, as a bonus, to drown out NorthVietnam’s rice crop. (While rains did increase, the Air Forcecouldn’t establish a clear link between this and the covertcampaign.)

As the UN Conference on the Human Environment wasconvening in Stockholm in 1972, a cloudburst drowned238 people in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA on a daywhen seeding experiments were going on nearby.

More recent and convincing experiments have focused on“hygroscopic cloud seeding” – that is, warm-cloud seedingas opposed to cold-cloud seeding (glaciogenic). Resultsfrom experiments at the South African NationalPrecipitation and Rainfall Enhancement Programme earnedresearchers there the United Arab Emirates’ 2005 Prize forExcellence in Advancing the Science and Practice ofWeather Modification. Other warm-cloud seeding projectshave taken place in the USA, Thailand, China, India,Australia, Israel, South Africa, Russia and Mexico.According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization(WMO), at least 26 governments were routinelyconducting weather-altering experiments at the turn of this

century. By 2003-2004, only 16 World MeteorologicalOrganization member countries reported

weather modification activities, althoughweather modification activities are known

to have taken place in many othercountries.

Many of the world’s military powersremain fascinated with weathercontrol. A U.S. Air Force report

entitled “Weather as a Force Multiplier:Owning the Weather in 2025” concluded

that the weather “can provide battlespacedominance to a degree never before imagined,”

including the ability to thwart an enemy’s operationsby enhancing a storm or by inducing drought and reducingfresh water supplies. In 2004, two Chinese cities in Henanprovince – Pingdingshan and Zhoukou – came close tofighting when both cities’ leaders tried to alter local weatherpatterns by blasting tiny silver iodide particles into thetroposphere (the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere). Thecity downwind accused the city upwind of stealing itsweather. This didn’t deter the Chinese government fromusing weather modification to fend off rain during the 2008Beijing Olympics. That effort was dwarfed by the weatherintervention at the beginning of October 2009 – involving260 technicians and 18 aircraft – which tried to secure clearskies for the National Day Parade.

Many of the world’s

military powers remain fascinated

with weathercontrol.


Case Study 1: Ocean Fertilization

“Engaging in experiments with theexplicit purpose of assessing ironfertilization for geoengineering isboth unnecessary and potentiallycounterproductive, because itdiverts scientific resources andencourages what we see asinappropriate commercial interestin the scheme.”

Aaron Strong, et al, Ocean fertilization: time to move on, Nature, 2009

The theory Oceans play a key role in regulating theworld’s climate. Phytoplankton(microorganisms that dwell on thesurface of the ocean), despite theirminute size, collectively account for halfof the carbon dioxide absorbed annuallyfrom the Earth’s atmosphere by plants.Through the process of photosynthesis,plankton capture carbon and sunlight forgrowth, and release oxygen into theatmosphere. The world’s oceans have already absorbed aboutone-third of all carbon dioxide (CO2) humans have generatedover the last 200 years. According to NASA, about 90% of theworld’s total carbon content has settled to the bottom of theocean, mostly in the form of dead biomass.

Proponents of ocean fertilization posit that dumping“nutrients” (generally iron, nitrogen or phosphorous) in watersidentified as “high nutrient low chlorophyll” (HNLC) – i.e.,where there are low concentrations of phytoplankton due tothe absence of one nutrient – will spur the growth ofphytoplankton. Since phytoplankton use CO2 forphotosynthesis, the idea is that increasing the population ofphytoplankton will increase CO2-absorption. They argue thatwhen individual phytoplankton die (the lifespan ofphytoplankton is short – a few days at most), they will fall tothe ocean floor leading to the long-term sequestration ofcarbon at the deeper levels of the sea.

The goal of commercial enterprisesengaged in ocean fertilization is to profitfrom selling carbon credits or offsets forthe sequestered CO2 through voluntaryor regulated carbon markets.

Phytoplankton populations in the world’soceans are declining as a result of climatechange and warmer water temperatures.The amount of iron that is naturallydeposited from atmospheric dust cloudsinto the global oceans (providingnutrients for phytoplankton) has alsodecreased dramatically in recent decades.According to NASA satellite data, aswater temperatures increased from 1999to 2004, the ocean’s microscopic plantlife dropped significantly. Oceans aroundthe equator in the Pacific saw as much asa 50 percent drop in phytoplanktonproduction. Advocates of ironfertilization schemes believe that iron isthe missing nutrient that will restorephytoplankton and sequester two tothree billion extra tonnes of carbon

dioxide every year – roughly one-third toone-half of global industry and automobile emissions. Someregions of the ocean (especially near the Arctic and Antarcticcircles) are nutrient-rich but anemic – they lack sufficient ironto stimulate plankton growth. With the addition of iron inthese presumably otherwise healthy zones, scientists hope toincrease plankton growth thereby increasing the absorption ofCO2. However, U.S. and Canadian scientists, writing in thejournal Science, point out that “the oceans’ food webs andbiogeochemical cycles would be altered in unintended ways.”They warn that if carbon trading schemes make it profitablefor companies to engage in ocean fertilization, “the cumulativeeffects of many such implementations would result in large-scale consequences – a classic ‘tragedy of the commons.’”Others note that iron may not be the ocean’s only nutrient“deficiency” – researchers have identified silicate as a crucialcomponent in carbon export, for example – but each“correction” to ocean water composition could haveunintended effects.

Illustration: Liz Snooks


Who�’s involved?There are both commercial and scientific ventures involved inocean fertilization and at least 13 experiments have beencarried out in the world’s oceans over the past 20 years. A2007 experiment near the Galapagos Islands by U.S. start-upPlanktos, Inc. was stopped because of an international civilsociety campaign. (See box on next page). The company wasalready selling carbon offsets on-line and the company’s CEOacknowledged that its ocean fertilization activities were asmuch a “business experiment” as a “science experiment.”Climos, another U.S. start-up in the field, is still operational.The CEO of Climos has proposed a “code of conduct” forocean fertilization experiments to “find effective ways for thescience, business and carbon market communities tocollaborate.” The Ocean Nourishment Corporation, anAustralian company run by Ian S.F. Jones with ties to theUniversity of Sydney, had plans to dump urea (nitrogen) intothe Sulu Sea but was stopped by the Filipino government in2007, after over 500 civil society organizations campaignedagainst the plan. The science of ocean fertilization isincreasingly discredited, with experimentation receivingnegative reviews from everyone from the Royal Society to NewScientist, not to mention the Inter-Governmental Panel onClimate Change.

The 191 governments attending the Convention on BiologicalDiversity adopted a de facto moratorium on oceanfertilization in May 2008 and then commissioned a synthesisof scientific research on the impact of ocean fertilization onbiodiversity. This synthesis emphasized the lack of knowledgeabout the role of oceans in the global carbon cycle and thedifficulty in establishing reliable baselines to test efficacy, inaddition to warning about the potential impacts of even small-scale experiments and of commercial ocean fertilization as awhole. Elsewhere, prominent ocean scientists have explainedin detail that ”we know enough about ocean fertilization tosay that it should not be considered further as a means tomitigate climate change” although they express interest infurther research that may involve the addition of nutrients tothe ocean in order to understand better marine ecological andbiogeochemical processes.68 The London Convention andProtocol on ocean dumping have also addressed the issue, andare trying to establish how to define a legitimate scientificexperiment and, as we go to press, are establishing protocolsfor legitimate scientific research and investigating whatpossible legal recourse available in the event of “illegitimate”activities.

What�’s wrong with ocean fertilization?Phytoplankton are the foundation of the marine food chain.Iron may well stimulate the growth of algae blooms but itspotential to capture and eliminate any significant amount ofcarbon is unproven. The list of potential side-effects is long:69

• Changes in marine food webs: Artificial planktonproduction may lead to changes in marine ecosystems at thebase of the food chain, of particular concern when oceanecosystems are already fragile and under stress.

• Reduced productivity in other areas: Iron-induced bloomsmay consume and deplete other vital nutrients, such thatareas down current from the fertilized area could sufferreduced plankton productivity and carbon fixation.

• Low oxygen levels: Some scientists have raised concerns thatthis could in turn deplete oxygen levels at deeper levels of theocean.

• Toxic Blooms: Artificially elevated nutrient levels could giverise to harmful algal blooms that produce toxins associatedwith shellfish poisoning, fatal to humans.

• Production of harmful gases: The production of dimethyl-sulphide (DMS), methane, nitrous oxide and volatile methylhalides can alter weather patterns unpredictably, cause ozonedepletion and open a Pandora’s box of impacts onatmospheric chemistry and global climate.

• Ocean acidification could be exacerbated. • Coral reefs can be dramatically affected by tiny increases in

nutrient fertilization, especially nitrogen, provoking thegrowth of toxic dinoflagellates.

• Devastating impacts on the livelihoods of people whodepend on healthy marine systems, most notably fisher folk.

Ocean Fertilization �– The Planktos Story

Planktos, Inc. was a U.S. start-up company that intended tosow the oceans with iron in order to create plankton bloomsthat would theoretically sequester CO2. By early 2007Planktos was already selling carbon offsets on its web site,claiming its initial ocean fertilization test, conducted off thecoast of Hawaii from the private yacht of singer Neil Young,was taking carbon out of the atmosphere. In May 2007,Planktos announced plans to set sail from Florida to dumptens of thousands of pounds of tiny iron particles over10,000 square kilometres of international waters near theGalapagos Islands, a location chosen, among other reasons,because no government permit or oversight would berequired.

In efforts to stop Planktos, civil society groups filed a formalrequest with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toinvestigate Planktos’ activities and to regulate them underthe U.S. Ocean Dumping Act. In addition, public interestorganizations asked the Securities Exchange Commission toinvestigate Planktos’ misleading statements to potentialinvestors regarding the legality and purported environmentalbenefits of their actions. Hit with negative publicity,Planktos announced in February 2008 it was indefinitelypostponing its plans because of a “highly effectivedisinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders.” InApril 2008, Planktos announced bankruptcy, sold its vesseland dismissed all employees. It “decided to abandon anyfuture ocean fertilization efforts” due to “serious difficulty”raising capital as a result of “widespread opposition.”


Case Study 2:

Artificial Volcanoes �– Reflective particles in the stratosphere

The theoryThis geoengineering technique falls under the category ofsolar radiation management (SRM) and aims to reduce theamount of sunlight entering the Earth’s atmosphere by puttingtiny, reflective particles into the stratosphere. The 1991eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed twentymillion tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere andthe entire planet cooled 0.4 to 0.5°C. Although the idea ofartificial volcanoes was first proposed in 1977, the concept hasundergone refinement in recent years. Scientists estimate thata 2% reduction of sunlight could negate the temperature-riseresulting from of a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Advocatesenvisage executing this technique regionally, most likely overthe Arctic, in order to stall the disappearance of, or even toreplenish, ice. The particles – sulphates are most commonlysuggested – could be blasted by jets, fire hoses, rockets orchimneys. More recently, it has been suggested that levitatingmanufactured nanoparticles could be used to the same end.Ideally, the particles would have a radius of approximately 5µmwith 50 nm thickness. The particles would need to be loftedabove the stratosphere at a rate of 100,000,000 kg per year,assuming the particles would last ten years.70

“Plan B” par excellence, artificial volcanic eruptions arepromoted as an “emergency” measure that would bring quickand inexpensive results. While some prominent scientists areanxious to move ahead with testing, others, including Rutgersprofessor Alan Robock, have argued that solar radiationmanagement cannot be tested without full-scaleimplementation because it is too difficult to distinguish theaffects of small-scale experiments on the climate from climaticfluctuations that occur naturally.71

Who�’s involved?Blasting particles into the atmosphere is getting moreattention than any other geoengineering technology. The U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) haslooked at possible methods for distributing the particles andNASA has researched the impacts of aerosols on climatechange.


The Novim Group, a California-based outfit with a mission topresent “clear scientificoptions…without advocacy”issued their first report onclimate engineering in July 2009,focusing on artificial volcaniceruptions. Steven Koonin, thenBP’s technology chief, nowUnder Secretary for Science atthe U.S. Department of Energy,was convener of the group andan author of the report. Thisstudy proposes an agenda forresearch, development anddeployment. In 2009, the UKRoyal Society, along with itspartners the EnvironmentalDefense Fund and the TWAS --the academy of sciences for thedeveloping world (Italy) --announced the SRM Governance Initiative which aims to“produce clear recommendation for the governance ofgeoengineering research.” The project is funded by, amongstothers, the Carbon War Room, which defines its mission asharnessing ”the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.” Bill Gates has alsoprovided funds to the Initiative.72

What�’s wrong with artificial volcanoes?Slowing down or stopping the rate of warming via solarradiation management does nothing to change the levels ofCO2 in the atmosphere, so symptoms are addressed but notcauses. Even advocates admit that injecting particles into thestratosphere has many unknown impacts, and that climatemodels are not comprehensive or accurate in predicting thefuture, but already there is research73 focusing on sulphateinjections, that suggests:

• That impacts could be very different regionally and severalmodels show strong risks of increased drought over vaststretches of Africa, Asia and Amazonia.

• There is a fundamental trade-off between average globaltemperature stability and regional precipitation patterns,with one study showing that, if this technology wereadopted, Northern countries and Southern countries wouldnot agree on the amount of sulphate to be pumped into thestratosphere because of the different impacts.

• There will be damage to the ozone as sulfate particles in thestratosphere provide additional surfaces for chlorinated gasessuch as CFCs and HFCs to react.

• The ability to target particles in the specific areas wheresunlight needs to be reduced (i.e., Arctic or Greenland) ishighly speculative and it is likely the particles would bediffused elsewhere.

• Preliminary modeling suggests a rapid rise in temperature ifthe programme were to be started and then stopped. Such arapid rise would likely be more dangerous to life on Earththan a gradual rise.

• Reduced sunlight could undermine the amount of directsolar energy available and disturb natural processes such asphotosynthesis.

• What goes up still (usually) comes down. The tonnes ofparticles that would be regularly blasted into the stratospherewill find their way back to Earth again. All the issues relatedto environmental health and safety associated withparticulate pollution, including novel manufacturednanoparticles, remain relevant for intentional pollutingschemes.

• Geoengineering the stratosphere makes it easier for industryto continue its own atmospheric pollution.

• Our skies would no longer be blue and astronomy would beimpeded.


Case Study 3: Cloud whitening �– albedo enhancement below the stratosphere

The theoryThe theory behind cloud whitening is deceptively simple:modify the composition of clouds by injecting them withseawater in order to make them whiter. Injection of salt watertheoretically increases the clouds’ “condensation nuclei,”making them smaller and more reflective. Up to 25% of theworld’s oceans are covered with thin low-lying stratocumulusclouds (below 2400 metres). Cloud whitening is another solarradiation management technique and, like simulating volcaniceruptions, it could reduce the temperature of the atmosphereand the oceans, but would not reduce levels of greenhousegases. It is imagined that fleets of unmanned vessels wouldspray mist created from drawn seawater into the clouds above.

Who�’s involved?The most prominent scientists advocating for cloud whiteningare John Latham from the National Center for AtmosphericResearch at the University of Colorado (USA) and StephenSalter from the University of Edinburgh (UK). Based on “veryartificial” modeling techniques that assume “perfect cloudcondensation nuclei,” Phil Rasch of the Pacific NorthwestNational Laboratory argues that seeding the clouds above onequarter to one half of the world’s oceans (!) could offsetwarming by 3 watts per square metre. Or, as Latham andothers hypothesize, “subject to resolution of specificproblems,” cloud whitening “could hold the Earth’stemperature constant as the atmospheric CO2 concentrationcontinues to rise to at least twice the current value.”74

There are also private sector players involved. Bill Gates hasfunded research on cloud whitening schemes, accounting for asmall amount of the $4.6 million he has given togeoengineering research through the Fund for InnovativeClimate and Energy Research. Kelly Wanser, an entrepreneurwho runs the Silver Lining Project in San Francisco, hadannounced that a large-scale (10,000 square kilometer) cloudwhitening experiment was being planned in the next couple ofyears. However, when the experiment was reported in theTimes of London in May 2010, and the involvement of BillGates in funding one of the key scientists (ArmandNeukermans) came to light, all of the project’s informationand list of scientific collaborators were soon after deleted fromthe website of the Silver Lining Project.75

What�’s wrong with cloud whitening?As noted by the American Meteorological Society in itsstatement on geoengineering, proposals that reduce thesunlight reaching the Earth would not only cool thetemperature, but “could also change global circulation withpotentially serious consequences such as changing storm tracksand precipitation patterns.” The statement continues: “As withinadvertent human-induced climate change, the consequencesof reflecting sunlight would almost certainly not be the samefor all nations and peoples, thus raising legal, ethical,diplomatic, and national security concerns.”76 Altering thecomposition of the clouds over one quarter to one half of theEarth’s surface will affect weather patterns and could disruptmarine ecosystems, including bird and plant life. Thetechnique is inherently transboundary and should requireinternational agreement. For example, models suggest that oneof the most effective areas to target is off the coast ofCalifornia and South America, but this may adversely effectcoastal rainfall and hence agriculture. Although there havebeen well-founded rumours regarding plans to experimentwith this technology in the Faroe Islands, located between theNorwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, these have not beenconfirmed and public queries from ETC Group have notproduced clarification.

The political and ethical dimensions of climate modificationare tremendous. In a 2005 interview in The Boston Globe,Harvard’s Director of the Laboratory for GeochemicalOceanography, Daniel Schrag, asked, “Suppose we couldcontrol hurricanes, but stopping one requires an incredibly hotday in Africa that would burn up all the crops.” Schrag wenton, “Let’s say you have a mirror in space. Think of twosummers ago when we were having this awful cold summerand Europe was having this awful heat wave. Who gets toadjust the mirror?”


Case study 4: Burn and bury biochar

The theoryPlants are classed as “carbon neutral:” they both absorb CO2

from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and then releasecarbon back into the air or soils when they decompose.Biochar is a technology that claims to be “carbon-negative:”unused agricultural or forestry “waste,” crops or trees grownfor this purpose are burnt under low-oxygen conditions in aprocess known as pyrolysis and then added to the soil wherethey remain stored indefinitely. In addition to safelysequestering carbon, the process delivers bioenergy as abyproduct that can replace some fossil fuel uses. Proponentsalso claim it improves soil fertility and water and food security.When biochar is envisioned on a large scale, as it would needto be to have a noticeable impact on the climate (i.e., millionsof hectares of land), it is a geoengineering technology.

Who�’s involved?The main lobby group, the International Biochar Initiative(IBI), brings together industrial interests and academics toadvocate for biochar subsidies and carbon credits, holding abi-annual conference and developing “sustainability criteria.”The IBI has a number of regional spin-off groups, and isactively promoting “supportive policy and regulatoryenvironments at international and national levels to help fosterinvestments in and commercialization of the nascent industry.”While most agree that research on biochar is far fromconclusive in terms of long-term carbon storage, and itsimpacts on soil health, some high profile climate changecommentators, such as scientists Tim Flannery and JamesLovelock, have endorsed biochar as a means of combatingclimate change.

According to one promotional web site(http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/), more than 40companies are actively engaged in producing biochar orbiochar technologies. Many of the private sector actors arestart-ups, but there are also oil and carbon trading interestsactively promoting biochar’s commercial deployment.ConocoPhillips Canada, with important interests in theAlberta Tar Sands, for example, has contributed to thedevelopment of a biochar protocol to make biochar eligible forcarbon offsets on the Alberta Offset System and the VoluntaryCarbon Standard – and eventually on global carbon markets.

Other players include Cargill, Embrapa and palm oil interestsin Malaysia, Indonesia and Colombia. Hype about biochar’sefficacy abounds in the mainstream press, ranging fromexaggerated and unsubstantiated claims to outright fraud.(The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suedexecutives of Pennsylvania-based Mantria Corporation forrunning a $30 million “Ponzi” scheme. The company claimedto be making 25 tonnes of biochar per day, but the companynever sold biochar and had just one facility supposedlyworking on future production).77 Despite the scientificuncertainty about biochar’s efficacy and the potential forunintended effects, some NGOs and international agencies(notably the United Nations Convention to CombatDesertification) have jumped on the biochar bandwagon.Africa is being heavily targeted by biochar marketers, raisinghopes among some governments that biochar will not onlyrender soils more fertile, but also deliver badly needed fundsthrough the carbon markets via the Clean DevelopmentMechanism. A November 2009 survey by NGOs identified 19different biochar field trials underway in Africa.78

What�’s wrong with biochar?Even if biochar turns out to sequester carbon long-term,hundreds of millions of hectares of land would be required toproduce the amount of biomass that would need to be burnedin order to sequester a significant amount of carbon.79 Biocharwill be unsustainable for the same reason agrofuels areunsustainable: there simply is no spare land upon which“biochar crops” can be grown without causing harm. In arecent article published in Nature Communications, theauthors, who include the Chair and Vice-Chair of the IBI,suggest that 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions could be‘offset’ with biochar, requiring not just vast quantities of“residues” but also the conversion of 526 million hectares ofland to dedicated crops and trees for biochar.80 In addition,biochar processing (transportation, burning, ploughing intoland) would all require significant energy inputs. Depletingsoils and forests and converting vast areas of land to biocharcrop plantations will worsen climate change.

Despite the grandiose claims for biochar, there are significantunknowns. A 2008 study by CSIRO (Australia), for example,identified a number of research gaps including: how differentfeedstocks affect biochar’s chemical and physical properties; itslong-term stability in the soil; the presence of toxins from thefeedstock itself or the combustion process; and social andeconomic constraints and impacts.81


As if restructuring the climate isn’t controversial enough, ahandful of geoengineers are privatizing the means to do so byclaiming patent rights over geoengineering techniques. Thepolitics of patents has always been a divisive issue when itsurfaces in different international fora. Climate negotiationsare no exception.

In the UNFCCC, governments from the global Southgenerally advocate enhanced mechanisms for transfer of usefultechnologies, including significant financing from developedcountries, arguing that existing intellectual property regimesare a barrier to accessing the technologies necessary to mitigateand adapt to climate change. The North advocates – and gets– strong protection of intellectual property, arguing that highprofits derived from IP drives invention and, eventually,transfer of technologies. The North has also more recentlyinsisted on “enabling environments,” a euphemismfor corporate-friendly policies at the nationallevel (e.g., liberalized foreign investmentand strong domestic IP regimes) aswell as easy government access forforeign corporations.

With regard to climate-relatedtechnologies, restricting thediffusion of technologies by wayof a twenty-year monopoly isclearly counterproductive toenabling urgent action. What IPin this sphere therefore enables isfor patent holders to levy lucrativelicensing and transfer fees or to pressfor a more favourable ‘enablingenvironment.’ As with other high-techindustries, the profits to be made from licensingpatented geoengineering technologies becomes a driver forgovernments to support geoengineering development, researchand diffusion – regardless of ethics, safety or efficacy.

If geoengineering techniques move toward actual deployment,the existence of patents held by individuals and privatecompanies could mean that decisions over the climate-commons will be effectively handed over to the private sector.Indeed geoengineers are already claiming that their patentsgive them extended commercial rights over the commons inwhich they operate. In one of several geoengineering patentsgranted to Professor Ian S.F. Jones, founder and CEO ofOcean Nourishment Corporation, the claim that his “oceannourishment” method of dumping urea into seawater willattract fish is accompanied by a claim of legal ownership overany fish subsequently harvested from a urea-fertilized patch ofocean! Jones has reiterated this legal claim in correspondencewith ETC Group.

Some geoengineering patents also attempt to appropriate andprivatize indigenous and traditional knowledge,

most clearly demonstrable in the area of“biochar.” The technique of burying

charcoal in soil was widely practiced bycommunities throughout the

Amazonian Basin before the turnof the first millennium, where itwas known as Terra Preta. Thistechnology is now the subject ofseveral patents. (See table below.)

As with other technologyinnovators (in software,

biotechnology, robotics), somegeoengineers are considering

forgoing their intellectual propertyclaims in order to speed up development

of the technology. CQuestrate, ageoengineering firm in the UK with investments

from Shell Research, is developing a technique to add lime tooceans. The company is a self-described “open sourcegeoengineering company” and declares it will not seek anypatents on the technology that results. The table on the nextpage provides a sampling of geoengineering patentapplications and issued patents.

Geoengineering andIntellectual Property Claims

If geoengineeringtechniques move towardactual deployment, the

existence of patents held byindividuals and private companies

could mean that decisions over the climate-commons will be

effectively handed overto the private

sector.


Patent number

US20020009338A1

US6056919

US6200530

US20090173386A1

WO2009062097A1

WO2009062093A1

WO2008131485A1

Title / explanation

Influencing weather patterns by way ofaltering surface or subsurface ocean watertemperatures / Refers to an ocean“upwelling” system capable of bringing updeeper waters to surface waters.Method of sequestering carbon dioxide /Refers to increasing phytoplankton byapplying nutrients to the ocean, specifically,fertilizers “in pulses”.Sequestering carbon dioxide in open oceansto counter global warm-ing / Refers toincreasing phytoplankton by applyingnutrients to the ocean, specifically, fertilizers“in pulses” and in a spiral pattern.Water alteration structure applications andmethods / Refers to using an ocean vessel forwave induced downwelling – pushing warmsurface waters to lower depths for hurricanesuppression, biological enhancement,“recreational area creation,” etc.

Ocean Fertilization Project Identificationand Inventorying / Refers to methods to“identify units of carbon sequestered forstorage with additional informationassociated with [ocean fertilization]projects”.Quantification and Quality Grading forCarbon Sequestered via Ocean Fertilization/ Systems and methods for accuratelyquantifying amounts of carbon sequesteredand the minimum periods of time beforewhich the sequestered carbon returned tothe atmosphere as CO2.Method For Attracting and ConcentratingFish /Increasing the number ofphytoplankton in the ocean by providing asource of nitrogen.

Inventor / assignee

Blum, Ronald D.; Duston, DwightP.; Loeb, Jack

Michael Markels

Michael Markels

Bowers, Jeffrey A.; Caldeira,Kenneth G.; Chan, Alistair K.;Gates, III, William H. (yes, a.k.a.Bill Gates); Hyde, Roderick A.;Ishikawa, Muriel Y.; Kare, JordinT.; Latham, John; Myhrvold,Nathan P.; Medina, Salter, StephenH.; Tegreene, Clarence T.;Wattenburg, Williard H.; Wood,JR., Lowell L. Searete LLCWhaley, Dan; Leinen, Margaret;Whilden, Kevin; Climos

Whaley, Dan; Leinen, Margaret;Whilden, Kevin; Climos

Jones, Ian S.F. OceanNourishment Foundation Limited,Australia

Publication date

January 24, 2002

May 2, 2002

March 13, 2001

July 9, 2009

May 14, 2009

May 14, 2009

Nov 6, 2008

A Sampling of Geoengineering Patents

Continued...


Patent number

WO2008131472A1

WO2008124883A1

EP1608721A1

WO2009061836A1

WO0065902A1

US6440367

US5965117

US5992089

JP2004148176A2

US20040111968A1

Title / explanation

Carbon Sequestration Using a FloatingVessel/ Refers to fertilizing the ocean withurea to increase the number ofphytoplankton.

Method of Determining the Amount ofCarbon Dioxide Sequestered into the Oceanas a Result of Ocean Nourishment /Provides a formula for calculating theamount of sequestered CO2 for thepurposes of “producing tradable carboncredit.”Method and Device for the Pyrolysis ofBiomass /Describes a process for “biochar” –heating biomass and compressing it underpressure.Removal of Carbon Dioxide from Air /Removing CO2 from a gas stream bycontacting the stream with a substratehaving cations on its surface, where CO2from the stream becomes attached to thesubstrate by reacting with anions, andreleasing CO2.Sequestering carbon dioxide in open oceansto counter global warming. Method of sequestering carbon dioxide witha fertilizer comprising chelated iron. Water-buoyant particulate materialscontaining micronutrients forphytoplankton / Ocean fertilization withiron. Process for sequestering into the ocean theatmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxideby means of supplementing the ocean withammonia or salts thereof. Method for Suppressing the Amount ofCarbon Dioxide Discharged / Refers to theproduction of biochar “to be embedded in aconcrete molded body or the ground.”Production and use of a soil amendmentmade by the combined production ofhydrogen, sequestered carbon and utilizingoff gases containing carbon dioxide /Describes a method for producing biochar.

Inventor / assignee

Jones, Ian S. F.; Rodgers, William;Wheen, Robert, John; Judd,Bruce, Joseph OceanNourishment Corporation PtyLimited, AustraliaJones, Ian, Stanley, FergusonOcean Nourishment CorporationPty Limited, Australia

Meier, Dietrich Klaubert, Hannes

Lackner, Klaus, S.; Wright, Allen, B. Global Research Technology, LLC

Michael Markels

Michael Markels/GreenSeaVentures, Inc. DuPont

Ian Jones, William Rodgers,Michael Gunaratnam, HelenYoung, Elizabeth Woollahra

Maywa Co. Ltd. ( Japan)

D. M. Day, James Weifu Lee

Publication date

Nov 6, 2008

Oct 23, 2008

Dec 28, 2005

May 14, 2009

Nov 9, 2000

Aug 27, 2002

Oct 12, 1999

Nov 30, 1999

May 27, 2004

June 17, 2004

Continued...


Patent number

GB2448591A8

WO2009155539A2

US20100064890A1

JP2006254903A2

US20090294366A1

GB0815498A0

GB0513933A0

US6890497

US20090227161A1

US20100199734A1

Title / explanation

Method for affecting atmospheric change,involves supporting high-altitude conduit bylifting forces, then flowing material e.g.sulphur oxide, through conduit, andexpelling material into atmosphere at highaltitudeCarbon dioxide capture method forgenerating carbon credits, involvesseparating anhydrous sodium carbonatefrom aqueous solution Carbon dioxide capture facility e.g. gas-liquid contactor, has pump that is operatedconstantly at the average flow rate toincrease the capture rate of carbon dioxideApparatus for lowering the watertemperature of a sea surface, to reduce theevaporation of water thus preventing thegeneration of low atmospheric pressure Removal of carbon dioxide from air involvescontacting air with carbon dioxide sorbent,contacting sorbent with ion exchange resin,contacting ion exchange resin with carbondioxide sorbent and recovering sorbentSea going hardware for the cloud albedomethod of reversing global warming Means for the reduction of global warmingby control of cloud albedo Extracting and sequestering of carbondioxide from a gas stream, utilizes water andcarbonate to form a bicarbonate solutionInorganic particles to float as reflectivesurface on the oceanPreparing a soil substitute, comprises mixingpyrogenic carbon with organic biomass,inoculating the mixture by addition of astarter culture made of microorganisms andincubating the mixture under air exclusion

Inventor / assignee

Alister Chan K; Roderick Hyde A;Nathan Myhrvold P; ClarenceTegreene T; Lowell Wood L Jr;Searete

Keith, David; Mahmoudkhani,Maryam 1446881 ALBERTALTD Non-standard company

Keith, David; Mahmoudkhani,Maryam; Biglioli, Alessandro;Hart, Brandon; Heidel, Kenton;Foniok, Mike; Kitamura Koichi; Ise Kogyo:KK

Wright, Allen B.; Lackner, KlausS.; Wright, Burton; Wallen, Matt;Ginster, Ursula; Tucson, AZ,United States of America Peters, Eddy J.; Salter, Steven H.

Salter, Steven; Latham, John

Rau, Gregory H.; Caldeira,Kenneth G

US Department of Energy

Lambert, Kal KBöttcher, Joachim; Pieplow, Haiko; Krieger, Alfons-Eduard

Publication date

Nov 26, 2008

Dec 23, 2009

Mar 18, 2010

Sept 28, 2006

Dec 3, 2009

Oct 1, 2008

Aug 17, 2005

May 10, 2005

Sept 10, 2009

Aug 12, 2010


Why is Geoengineering unacceptable?

• It can’t be tested: No experimental phase is possible– in order to have a noticeable impact on theclimate, geoengineering must be deployed on amassive scale. “Experiments” or “field trials” areactually equivalent to deployment in the real worldbecause small-scale tests do not deliver the data onclimate effects. For people and biodiversity, impactswould likely be massive as well, and immediate andpossibly irreversible.

• It is unequal: OECD governments and powerfulcorporations (who have denied or ignored climatechange and its impact on biodiversity for decadesbut are responsible for most of historic GHGemissions) are the ones with the budgets and thetechnology to execute this gamble with Gaia. Thereis no reason to trust that they will have the interestsof more vulnerable states or peoples in mind.

• It is unilateral: Although all geoengineeringproposals run into the tens of billions of dollars, forrich nations and billionaires, they could beconsidered relatively cheap (and simple) to deploy.The capacity to act will be within the hands of thosewho possess the technology (individuals,corporations, states) in the next few years. It isurgent that multilateral measures are taken to banany unilateral attempts to manipulate Earthecosystems.

• It is risky and unpredictable: The side effects of geoengineered interventions are

unknown. Geoengineering could easily have unintended consequences due to any number offactors: mechanical failure, human error, inadequateunderstanding of ecosystems and biodiversity andthe Earth’s climate, unforeseen natural phenomena,irreversibility, or funding interruptions.

• It violates treaties: Many geoengineeringtechniques have latent military purposes and theirdeployment would violate the UN EnvironmentalModification Treaty (ENMOD), which prohibitsthe hostile use of environmental modification. SeeAppendix One for other examples.

• It is the perfect excuse: Geoengineering offersgovernments an option other than reducingemissions and protecting biodiversity.Geoengineering research is often seen as a way to“buy time,” but it also gives governmentsjustification to delay compensation for damagecaused by climate change and to avoid taking actionon emissions reduction.

• It commodifies our climate and raises the spectreof climate profiteering: Those who think theyhave a planetary fix for the climate crisis are alreadyflooding patent offices with patent applications.Should a “Plan B” ever be agreed upon, the prospectof it being privately held is terrifying. Seriousplanet-altering technologies should never beundertaken for commercial profit. If geoengineeringis actually a climate emergency back-up plan, then itshould not be eligible for carbon credits under theClean Development Mechanism or any other offsetsystem.

‘Pie-in-the-sky competition’ by Shtig


Part 3: Governing Geoengineering or Geoengineering Governance?

More than a set of technologies, geoengineering is a politicalstrategy. Rather than nurturing and protecting biodiversity,the objective of geoengineering is to sustain the very excessesthat are at the origin of the ecological and social crises inwhich we find ourselves. Simultaneously, OECD states seegeoengineering as “plausible denial” allowingthem to shift funding to their ownindustries to develop geoengineeringtechnologies and sidestep funding tocompensate the global South for thedamages already incurred due toClimate Change.

Geoengineering offers atechnological “fix” to thegovernments and industries thatcreated the climate crisis in thefirst place, and then failed toadopt the policies that wouldmitigate its damage. Theconsequences of high-riskgeoengineering activities, including realworld experimentation, are global. Theworld’s peoples and governments must debatethese consequences and determine limits now, before anyaction outside the laboratory can be countenanced. Nounilateral initiative to experiment with these technologies canbe considered legally, practically or morally acceptable.

The year 2010 was critical for the discussion ofgeoengineering in general, and of governance in particular.The breakdown of global climate negotiations in Copenhagenat the end of 2009 offered the “Geoclique”83 a rare politicalopportunity to advance their agenda, though most realizedthat progress on governance was vital to their success.84

Building on the credibility boost obtained through the UKRoyal Society’s 2009 report, they undertook to debate thequestion of governance publicly.

Some key moments: Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention, organizedby two US organizations (the Climate Response Fund and theClimate Institute), was held in March 2010 at the California

resort. The event was inspired by the 1975 Asilomarmeeting on recombinant DNA, which

established voluntary guidelines ongenetic engineering that “not only

allowed genetic research to resumebut also helped to persuade

Congress that legislativerestrictions were not needed. Inother words, that scientists couldgovern themselves.”85 The so-called International Conferenceon Climate Intervention brought

together 172 scientists and ascattering of other experts. Their

job was to configure voluntaryguidelines that the “scientific

community” could use for “governing”research and experimentation. All but 4

participants at this “international” meeting werefrom institutions in the industrialized world. Mostparticipants received funding in order to attend.86 The eventwas bankrolled by the Climate Response Fund, publiclycriticized for its conflict of interest due to its choice ofsponsors and links with commercial ocean fertilizationactivities,87 and by the Guttman Initiatives, who specialize inincreasing “return of investment for a business by introducingnew products, generating new revenue, and by increasingpublic support of the industry through positive, proactive,arms length public relations and cause marketing campaigns.”88

“The issue of large-scale geoengineering

experimentation and its impact is notabout technical peer-review. It is about no

less than rights, responsibilities and thefuture of the planet. This public debate must

include the peoples and countries that are mostvulnerable and likely to be affected by

geoengineering, not only those who stand togain from its exploitation.”

Civil Society letter to organizers of theAsilomar Conference on Climate

Intervention.82


Joint Congressional and Parliamentary hearings on theRegulation of Geoengineering in the US and UK

These hearings offered an unprecedented forum togeoengineering proponents. However, women, the globalSouth, and critical voices were all severely under-represented,leaving the politicians and researchers with a one-sided view ofhow necessary geoengineering is, how more research dollarsare required, and how it would be unwise to bring this matterto the UN “prematurely.” Quoting self-styled “geoengineeringgovernance expert” John Virgoe, the Committee said the UKmust become a “policy entrepreneur pressing for seriousconsideration of, or research into, geoengineering.”89 The UKCommittee’s final report: “The UN is the route by whicheventually we envisage the regulatory framework operating,but first the UK and other governments need to prime theUN pump. As Mr. Virgoe pointed out, such ‘an approachwould encourage enhanced awareness of the options and helpensure that, if and when a crisis arrives, there is a reasonablechance of getting multilateral agreement to a geoengineeringdeployment through the UN.”90

US Government Accountability Office (GAO)

The GAO has been working on the issue for many monthsand as we go to press, two reports are expected: one that willreview US involvement in geoengineering and that will dealwith the issue of governance; and another that is known as a“technology assessment” which will look globally at theleading developments in science and technology in the field,their limitations and possible social responses. Somepreliminary observations were offered by Frank Rusco, GAODirector for Natural Resources and Environment, in March2010 when he appeared before the House of RepresentativesScience and Technology Committee.91

Chatham House Chats

In addition to these very public events, there were manysmaller off-the-record, invitation-only encounters where theGeoclique put into practice their preferred “bottom-up”approach. Foreign policy movers and shakers from OECDcountries were wooed and wowed by leading geoengineeringscientists. Chatham House Rule meetings took place underthe auspices of the International Risk Governance Counciland the Centre for International Governance Innovation, forexample.92

One of the ideas floated as a trial balloon was the notion of an“allowed zone” for SRM experiments, which would only needto be “informally vetted” with the “international researchcommunity,” allowing scientists “to proceed with studies thatfall inside this zone without formal international approval,subject only to the requirement that their studies are publiclyannounced and all results are made public.”93

The UK Royal Society, in partnership with the TWAS (theAcademy of Sciences for the Developing World) and theEnvironmental Defense Fund, has also announced its “SolarRadiation Management Governance Initiative.” Whileclaiming to welcome “a diversity of views,” they have invitedonly those organizations and individuals who were firmlyonside and could be trusted to look favourably upon thisgovernance entrepreneurship. While using one hand to claimthat geoengineering is not a substitute for mitigation, theywarn with the other that “it may be the only option,”recognizing that “broad legitimacy and support” will berequired if research is to proceed. In the project’s description,there is no reference to the possibility that the world coulddecide to NOT go down this path. As with the Asilomarconference, it is a marketing exercise wrapped up as a policydiscussion.

The political economy of researchThe Geoclique prefers to publicly discuss research aboutgeoengineering rather than discuss geoengineering itself.Leading spokespersons for the scientific community go togreat lengths to insist that advocating for more research is anentirely separate matter from advocating for development anddeployment of the technologies. This view is at best naive andat worst deliberately misleading. Scientists have their careersand often financial interests at stake, and they want morefunding, more institutional support and a more permissiveregulatory environment. Also at play are carbon markets,corporate interests, patents, profits, policies, institutionalreputations, egos and scientific hubris. All this pervertsresearch and ensures that some directions are followed andothers are left behind. The dollars that are spent ongeoengineering research will necessarily be diverted fromelsewhere, including from badly needed funds for adaptation,already hopelessly inadequate.94


ABCDE�… Won�’t you researchalong with me!

Advocating more money for geoengineering researchhas been the common chorus of the five main groupsdescribed below. Geoengineering is often spoken of asPlan B, but in fact, there is also Plan A, C, D, and E.While there are many links between these groups,getting more money for research is what really unitesthem:

Plan A (Action): Geoengineering is faster and cheaper than carbon taxesand emission reductions. Let’s get on with it!(Copenhagen Consensus Center’s Bjorn Lomborg, VirginAirline’s CEO Richard Branson, and the AmericanEnterprise Institute).

Plan B (Backup): We must prepare an emergency Plan B because we areheaded towards certain climate catastrophe (UK RoyalSociety, Carnegie Institution / Stanford Universityscientist Ken Caldeira, University of Calgary physicistDavid Keith).

Plan C (Commerce): There is good money (and carbon credits) to be madefrom geoengineering (ocean fertilisation company Climos,the network and lobby group International BiocharInitiative).

Plan D (Defense): Control of the climate, especially regional control, givesmilitary advantage (Star Wars architect Lowell Wood, U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-DARPA).

Plan E (Environmentalists): Ecological emergency means we need to look seriously atdeployment (Frozen Isthmuses Protection Campaign,Environmental Defense Fund).

UK and US lead inGeoengineering research

Public research money has started to flow but is expected tohaemorrhage in the coming years unless there is a global banon testing. A three-year European program of $1.5 million wasannounced in 2008: “Implications and Risks of EngineeringSolar Radiation to Limit Climate Change (IMPLICC).”95 It issponsored by French, Norwegian and German institutions.The UK’s research councils timed their own announcement offunding directly to the Royal Society’s geoengineering reportlaunch on September 1, 2009, and have reportedlycontributed $4.5 million.96 Those with resources include theNational Engineering Research Council’s public dialogue ongeoengineering,97 while the Engineering and Physical SciencesResearch Council has announced US$2.6 million to theUniversity of Leeds for its program entitled “IntegratedAssessment of Geoengineering Proposals.”98 The UK nationalweather authority, known as the Met Office, is now coveringgeoengineering on its website and calling for more research.Further, several UK government departments (Department ofEnergy and Climate Change and the Department ofEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs) are actively followinggeoengineering developments (despite an overall downsizingof government). Many other institutions are also implicated:the Oxford Geoengineering Institute, the University of EastAnglia’s Tyndall Centre, the Geoengineering Assessment andResearch Centre, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, andthe Kavli Centre for Theoretical Physics.

Even though the US Department of Energy had a $64 millionplan for geoengineering research back in 2001, it has not yetinitiated a coordinated research program (at least as we go topress). Indeed, key figures at the Department were astonishedto learn in the press that Bill Gates was fundinggeoengineering.99 The US National Science Foundation, theDepartment of Energy and the US Department of Agriculturehave had small research initiatives,100 but a much granderprogram is anticipated in the short term, with CongressmanBart Gordon announcing that he hopes a bill will beintroduced to authorize a federal geoengineering researchprogram in late 2012.101 Certainly, the expectations are high.Geoengineering scientist David Keith, in Canada, wants to seea hundred-fold increase in the amount of public moneydevoted to the topic – from approximately $10 million todayto $1 billion within a decade.102

The HOME campaign(www.handsoffmotherearth.org )was launched in April 2010 atThe World People’s Conferenceon Climate Change and theRights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba Bolivia by acoalition of international civilsociety groups, indigenous peoplesorganizations and socialmovements.


He even argues that an immediate investment in SRM is awise decision because, “the value of reducing this uncertaintycan readily exceed several trillion US dollars over the next 100years.”103 (Needless to say, a legally binding global ban ontesting would considerably reduce uncertainty about SRMdeployment and would not cost anything).

Those who would have the technical, scientific and financialresources to carry out geoengineering schemes that wouldpretend to manage Earth’s systems in a predictable manner (beit the carbon cycle, ocean currents, atmospheric dynamics,etc.) operate from the North (geographically, culturally,economically, politically). These well-capitalized governmentsand corporations are not only responsible for the climatecrisis, they prevaricated and denied its existence, slowed downand sabotaged the best available multilateral responses(emissions reduction under the principle of common butdifferentiated responsibility), and put forward deeply unequaland false “solutions,” such as carbon trading and offsets,carbon capture and storage, expansion of biofuels, REDD, andproprietary GMO–driven agriculture. All this whileincreasing emissions.

Can we then expect, from OECD governments, a Damasceneconversion that will result in a thoughtful and consequentialconsideration of the rights, interests and livelihoods of poorcountries and peoples? Quite the contrary. Geoengineeringschemes will entrench and exacerbate existing inequalities.The global South suffers more severe climate change impactsthan the industrialized North. Peoples of the South should bein control of climate response decisions instead of being cast ashelpless victims waiting to be saved by the technologies of theNorth, with lip service to their interests the onlyacknowledgement of their dilemma.

Experimenting with MotherEarth: Small-scaleGeoengineering is an OxymoronSome small-scale experimentation has taken place with somegeoengineering technologies (for example, biochar, oceanfertilization). Such experiments may yield some knowledgeabout biochemical reactions in the milieu in which substances(charcoal, iron) are introduced. But small-scale experimentscannot yield the critical information that large-scalegeoengineering requires to become a reliable technology. Forexample, how many gigatonnes of carbon could be sequesteredover the long term if these technologies were executed on amassive scale? And what are the potential consequencesshould it go wrong? Even though a geographically small-scaleexperiment may be designed to have “acceptably” limitedimpact on ecosystems, the experiment will not be consideredto be conclusive – especially by commercially interestedadvocates, who will in turn press for larger tests.

A clear example of this ‘slippery slope’ is in the debate overocean fertilization. More than a dozen small-scale experimentshave shown the technique to be ineffective in terms of carbonsequestration, not to mention potentially dangerous to marineecosystems. That should signal the end of the dream.However, advocates of ocean fertilization argue instead thatthose failures point to the need for larger-scale tests in order tounderstand how real deployment would work.104

The debate over experimentation vs. deployment isparticularly lively in the case of stratospheric aerosols.105

University of Calgary physicist David Keith has argued, “Fieldtests will be needed, such as generating and trackingstratospheric aerosols to block sunlight, and dispersing sea-salt

aerosols to brighten marine clouds. Such tests can be small:releasing tonnes, not megatonnes, of material.”106 But

Rutgers environmental scientist Alan Robockdisputes the wisdom of moving tests outside,

stating: “Geoengineering cannot be testedwithout full-scale implementation. The initialprediction of aerosol droplets can be tested on asmall scale but how they will grow in size(which determines the injection needed toproduce a particular cooling) can only be tested

by injection into an existing aerosol cloud, whichcannot be confined to one location. Furthermore,

weather and climate variability precludeobservation of the climate response without a large,

decade-long forcing. Such full-scale implementation coulddisrupt food production on a large scale.”107


Military MattersThe military implications of geoengineering and weathermodification are often forgotten, or at least hidden from view.Journalist Jeff Goodell, who is sympathetic to thegeoengineering enterprise, calls it the elephant in the room:“It’s not easy to see how a serious geoengineering programcould move forward without some degree of militaryinvolvement both here in the United States and in countriessuch as China and Russia.”108 Weather control has long been aconsideration of military strategists and the geoengineering-military connections will be strengthened as increasedattention is devoted to the “security” implications of climatechange. As science historian James Fleming has shown, themilitary distorts science and engineering by imposing secrecyon new discoveries, seeking to weaponize every technique,even those designed for peaceful purposes. In exchange, theyoffer scientists access to political power, an unlimited streamof resources, and the ability to deliver on the promise ofcontrolling nature/weather/climate.109 Key military strategistsare involved in geoengineering development discussions.‘Father of the atom bomb’ Edward Teller, in his day, wasinvolved, as was his protégé, Star Wars architect Lowell Wood,who continues to publish on the topic. Key US institutionswith military mandates, budgets and contracts, such as theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA andDARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency)are also involved. Some geoengineering scientists, such asGregory Benford, have argued that the military must beinvolved as they “can muster resources and they don’t have tosit in Congress and answer questions about every dime of theirmoney.”110

Corporate ConnectionsGeoengineering is still too contested a field for most bigcorporate investors, and for many an open association withgeoengineering would be a public relations liability. At thisstage, the fossil fuel and automobile industries are much morelikely to fund market-friendly solutions and organizationsthan they are to openly advocate for geoengineering solutions.

However, there is a complex web of connections between bigcapital and the global technofixers, comprised of researchers,multinational corporations and small start-ups, the militaryestablishment and respected think tanks, policy makers andpoliticians. The non-profit institutions that promotegeoengineering are well connected with the private sector.

In an event called the “Virgin Earth Challenge,” RichardBranson, CEO Virgin Airlines, offered $25 million for aclimate technofix.111 He has also devoted considerableresources to the Carbon War Room, a “geoengineeringbattlefield” that is actively engaged in obtaining offsets forbiochar and cloud whitening. Bill Gates has provided US$4.6million to scientists David Keith and Ken Caldeira forgeoengineering and climate related research, and Microsoft’sformer technology chief, Nathan Myhrvold, is busy patentinggeoengineering technologies through his firm IntellectualVentures, which counts prominent geoengineers amongst itssenior scientists.112 Both Gates and Branson have providedfunding to the so-called Solar Radiation ManagementGovernance Initiative, headed up by the UK Royal Society.113

In his former role as BP’s Chief Scientist, Steve Kooninconvened a group of scientists under the auspices of NOVIMto look at the research, experimentation and deployment ofstratospheric aerosols.114 He then went on to become Under-secretary of State for Energy in the Obama administration. Ayear later, the lead author of that report, Jason Blackstock,convened a Chatham House Rule meeting at the Centre forInternational Governance Innovation in Canada for seniorbusiness executives and policy makers and a select group ofindividuals to explore bottom up governance innovations and“prepare for emerging geoengineering possibilities.”115

Blackstock argues that geoengineering technologies are morelikely to be deployed by a small island state than by the UnitedStates of America!116 CIGI, along with the Royal Society, alsoran three geoengineering side events during the CopenhagenClimate summit in December 2009. Shell Research has beeninvolved in the International Biochar initiative and fundsCQuestrate, an open source start-up looking into liming theoceans that is headed by Tim Kruger, who also runs theOxford Geoengineering Institute.117 ExxonMobil has fundedsimilar research into altering the ocean’s alkalinity in order toincrease carbon dioxide absorption.118 Boeing’s IntegratedDefense Systems Chief Scientist and Vice President DavidWhelan (formerly of DARPA) is also active in geoengineeringdebates. He claims there is a small team at Boeing studying theissue and has publicly mused about the technical feasibility ofgetting megatonnes of aerosol sulphates up to different levelsvia aircraft or large cannons.119 Whelan also sits on theNational Centre on Energy Policy’s task force ongeoengineering. ConocoPhillips Canada, which invests in theAthabaska tar sands, is also working to obtain an “industry-led” protocol for biochar on the Alberta Offsets System.120


Macho Mama: Geoengineering�’s gender biasThe astute reader will notice that these actors (with fewexceptions) are men from northern industrialized countries.This demographic homogeneity for a subject so universal inits implications is dismaying. In one recent content analysisexamining English language print and online media coverage,it was found that men provided 97% of the mediacommentary on geoengineering.121 Overwhelmingly, it is menwho do the science, write about the field, and who are calledupon to comment and testify in policy debates. Some of thefew female scientists working in geoengineering have remarkedthat their invitations to participate in discussions werepredicated only on the fact that the men were embarrassed tofind themselves in exclusively male company.122

While it is not clear what impact, if any, this has on theresearch, it has certainly led to a proliferation of male sexualmetaphors. The authors of SuperFreakonomics, whenspeaking about stratospheric aerosols, stated, “Whatdistinguishes a big-ass volcano is not just how much ejaculateit has but where the ejaculate goes.”123 Elsewhere, a scientistand a journalist giggle over comparisons between “gettinghard” (and not knowing what to do with it) and “developingtechnologies” (and not knowing what use they will be putto).124 For all the talk about risks and benefits associated withthese technologies, virtually no attention has been paid to thefact that women and men tend to assess risk differently.125

The case for a MoratoriumGovernance determines who has power, who makes decisions,how other players make their voice heard, and how account isrendered.126 Often, it is the scientists and institutions engagedin the geoengineering projects who are among the mostanxious to put in place some structure of governance, since theabsence of any governance regime is seen as delaying funding,experimentation opportunities, public acceptance, and theability to take techno-fixes to market.

The dominant frame in which experts talk aboutgeoengineering governance is voluntary: “codes of practice,”“voluntary standards,” “norm entrepreneurship,” and “bottom-up approaches” are offered, whereas words like “legallybinding,” “prohibition,” and “treaty” are rarely mentioned.

In fact, several prominent experts argue explicitly against such“outmoded” and “ineffective” multilateral processes.127 In thecase of the 2010 Asilomar conference on climate engineering,sponsored by the Climate Response Fund, organizers tried(unsuccessfully) to restrict the debate on governance tovoluntary standards.128 Indeed, the only topic up for discussionwas voluntary guidelines – not the a priori question ofwhether or not any research and experimentation is evendesirable. This point was made by a coalition of non-governmental organizations who declined to participate in adebate that was so limited in scope.129 In the end, the outputof the meeting was rather meager -- and predictable: a call formore research.130

One of the reasons the geoengineering debate has focused onresearch governance is that the technology itself is largelytheoretical (there is no actual deployment to govern). Anotherreason is that the real world consequences of researchexperiments are potentially devastating. This stage should notbe exempted from international monitoring and regulation.Since it is “only research,” the argument goes, voluntaryapproaches are more acceptable than if actual deploymentwere being discussed. More research, advocated by the vastmajority of scientists, may even seem precautionary. Yes, if welived in a perfect world, where all nations and all peoples wereequal, where technologies were carefully assessed before theywere deployed and where science was guided uniquely byserving the long-term interests of humanity, more researchmight not be such a bad idea. This, however, is not the case.

So far, the most promising multilateral avenue for governanceof geoengineering is the Convention on Biological Diversity.Already in 2008, the CBD was ahead of the curve when itadopted a moratorium on ocean fertilization. The CBD hasalmost universal membership (193 member states) – the mostnotable exception being the United States – and a clearmandate to look not only at biodiversity, but also to involvelocal communities and indigenous peoples in its procedures.Geoengineering is now firmly on its agenda. If the protectionof biodiversity as defined by the CBD means the carefulstewardship of diverse genetic resources that make up theplanet’s microorganisms, plants and animals, ensuring theirsustainable use and fair and equitable benefits, then surelygeoengineering, with its top-down, quick-fix, “boys’ club”dimensions is diametrically opposed.


Many international treaties are potentially violated bygeoengineering (see Appendix 1). The geoengineering suite oftechnologies affects outer space, the atmosphere, the land, theoceans and fresh water bodies, the weather, the production offood, the protection of health and livelihoods, and nationalsovereignty. It entails risks that we know about and manymore that we cannot yet predict. Until there has been a fulldebate on the course all countries wish to go, there must be amoratorium on all geoengineering activities outside thelaboratory. Anything else is folly, putting the planet and itspeoples at tremendous and unjustifiable risk.

The geoengineering establishment rails against any restrictionson testing of these technologies, while Southern governments,scientists and activists who oppose real-world testing areattacked as “sticking their heads in the sand.” Very shortly, theworld will be faced with a decision: whether geoengineeringgovernance is to be established by a set a voluntary normsscripted by a small group of enthusiasts in closed-doormeetings with no accountability to the internationalcommunity, or whether the world’s governments willcollectively call for a halt on all real world experimentation toensure that the Earth’s systems are not hijacked in the name offixing global warming or anything else.

A moratorium on geoengineering is the only possibility whenthe international community lacks the capacity to monitor,assess or regulate new technologies that have broad social orenvironmental impacts. It is incumbent upon the UnitedNations to establish something like an InternationalConvention for the Evaluation of New Technologies(ICENT), which would allow governments to properly trackemerging technological developments from the lab all the waythrough to commercialization. As such, regulatorymechanisms could evolve, as appropriate, in an orderly andpredictable manner and reliable information on their benefitsand risks would be available to the public.

A real governance discussion ongeoengineering would have to be:

International, transparent and accountable, where allgovernments can freely participate in a democratic manner,open to public scrutiny and the full participation of civilsociety organizations, Indigenous peoples and socialmovements (especially those most directly affected byclimate change), and that is accountable to the UN in itsoutcomes.

Free from corporate influence so that private interests cannotuse their power to determine favourable outcomes or topromote schemes that serve their interests.

Respectful of existing international laws including thoseprotecting peace and security, human rights, biodiversity,national sovereignty, and those prohibiting hostile acts ofweather modification.

Mindful of concomitant crises, especially hunger, poverty, lossof biological diversity, ecosystem destruction and oceanacidification.

Guided by the principle of precaution and cognizant thatneither the seriousness of the climate crisis nor a lack ofscientific knowledge can be used to justify experimentation.

Govern all technology, not justGeoengineering technologiesA wider global mechanism for technology assessment is longoverdue. Geoengineering is not the only technology thatmarkets itself as a solution while creating a more serious set ofproblems. History is replete with examples of technologiesthat have been sold as panaceas and then released into theenvironment without proper evaluation of their risks andbenefits beforehand.131 At the UNFCCC, for example, despiteyears of a stated commitment to diffuse "environmentallysound technologies," assessment is a radical and rare notion, asis consideration of the socio-economic impacts oftechnologies.

In the weeks before Copenhagen, more than 200organizations signed on to a joint declaration, “Let’s LookBefore We Leap.” The declaration called on states to put inplace a process for the assessment or evaluation of newtechnologies before they are deployed. “Precaution demandsthe careful assessment of technologies before, not after,governments and inter-governmental bodies start fundingtheir development and aiding their deployment around theglobe… National and international programs of publicconsultation, with the participation of the people who aredirectly affected, are critical. People must have the ability todecide which technologies they want, and to rejecttechnologies that are neither environmentally sound norsocially equitable.”132


Appendix 1:

A selection of existing International Treaties that could be violated by Geoengineering experiments

Treaty Bodies

Vienna Convention on Protectionof the Ozone Layer, and MontrealProtocolConvention on the Prohibition ofMilitary or Any Other Hostile Useof Environmental ModificationTechniques (or ENMOD,Environmental ModificationConvention)Convention on BiologicalDiversity

London Convention and Protocol

Convention on Long RangeTransboundary Air Pollution(Europe)

International Convention onEconomic, Social and CulturalRightsInternational Declaration on theRights of Indigenous PeoplesUnited Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Changeand Kyoto Protocol

SignatoryParties

196

73

193

86/35

53

160

Notapplicable133

192

Relevance

Injection of sulphate or aluminum aerosols into thestratosphere is expected to harm the ozone layer.

Prohibits intentional use of environmental modification ofone party against another for hostile purposes. It outrightbans weather warfare.

Has established de facto moratorium on ocean fertilization.Discussions underway on impact of geoengineering onbiodiversity.Has been establishing rules for “legitimate scientificexperiments” in ocean fertilization, and contemplatingaction on other ocean-based geoengineering technologies.Long-range transboundary air pollution is defined as thehuman introduction of substances or energy into the airwhich has deleterious effects on human health, theenvironment, or material property in another country, andfor which the contribution of individual emission sources orgroups of sources cannot be distinguished.Protects the right to food, health and an adequate standardof living under the general principle of “progressiverealization.”Recognizes the right of free prior and informed consent tomeasures that affect Indigenous peoplesThe main treaty dealing with climate change. It establishesprinciples such as common but differentiatedresponsibilities. It also establishes carbon credits throughthe CDM and flexibility mechanisms whose rules affect theprofitability of geoengineering.

Continued on next page...


Treaty Bodies

UN Convention on the Law of theSea (UNCLOS)

Outer Space Treaty

United Nations Convention toCombat Desertification in thoseCountries Experiencing SeriousDrought and/or Desertification,Particularly in AfricaConvention on Access toInformation, Public Participation inDecision-Making and Access toJustice in Environmental Matters(Europe)Antarctic Treaty System

SignatoryParties

160

99

194

44

28

Relevance

Widely seen as constitution of the ocean. It is mandated tocontrol ocean pollution from any source.ARTICLE 195 states that “Parties shall not transfer directlyor indirectly damage or hazards from one area to another ortransform one type of pollution into another.”This treaty defines celestial resources as common heritageof mankind to be used for peaceful purposes. It gives allParties rights of consultation with a state planningexperiments in outer space.The UNCCD has already been involved in the biochardebate. Certain geoengineering technologies will havedirect impacts on deserts.

This treaty links the environment to human rights. Itacknowledges our debt to future generations with itsemphasis on public accountability.

This treaty establishes Antarctica as an area reserved forpeaceful purposes, including scientific research.


Appendix 2:

An International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT)

The challenge of addressing climate change highlights the criticalneed for the sound and timely evaluation of new technologies.What is required is an international participatory and transparentprocess that supports societal understanding, encourages scientificdiscovery and diversity, facilitates equitable benefit-sharing fromnew technologies, and results in a legally binding treaty: anInternational Convention for the Evaluation of NewTechnologies. Such an instrument could also ensure theconservation of useful, conventional or culturally distincttechnologies and promote technological diversification anddecentralization.

UN treaties and organizations that deal with geoengineeringshould work with states to draft and adopt a multilateral treatythat provides a framework for the assessment (including an earlywarning system), monitoring and regulation of new and emergingtechnologies based on the following principles:

• Strict application of precautionary principle• No unilateralism• Ensuring environmental integrity• Full consideration of potential negative social, cultural or

environmental impacts• Open and transparent process with full civil society

participation, including social movements and indigenouspeoples

• Fair, full and equitable representation and participation ofdeveloping countries

• Respect for international human rights and environmental law

Southern governments will welcome the early warningprocedures, open and participatory assessment, and facilitatedaccess elements of the initiative. Some risk assessment andregulatory expenses could be secured at the international level.The North – including scientific organizations, industry, andgovernments – will welcome an end to unpredictability andsocietal distrust. The establishment of a generalized, non-crisisapproach to technology diffusion will also be a relief. Atransparent and participatory process with both early listeningand technology conservation/diversification potential willencourage civil society. Everyone stands to gain by such aninstrument, and the absence of one is a threat to us all.

Elements of ICENT The following is a possible structure for such aconvention:

The member states would form a Conference of theParties to the Convention (COP). The COP wouldbe supported by a modest Secretariat and enabled by aBureau comprised of regionally determinedrepresentative states. The COP would meet bienniallywhile the Bureau would meet semi-annually. Twoexpert permanent committees, consisting of allmembers, would convene annually and report to COPthrough the Bureau.

This new treaty body would have a Committee onTechnology Assessment (COTA) to identifysignificant new technologies, establish appropriateevaluation processes for each identified technology,review progress, and recommend each technology’sdismissal, delay or diffusion to COP.

COTDAC, the Committee on TechnologicalDiffusion and Conservation, would promote theconservation and enhancement ofconventional/cultural technologies, encouragetechnological diversification, promote publicparticipation and understanding, and support thediffusion of appropriate new technologies. COTDACwould have the financial resources to support nationalcapacity building in science and technology, and toencourage broad and equitable dissemination.

Although it would function financially and politicallyas an independent nongovernmental agency,ACSENT (Advisory Committee for the Socio-Economic and Ecological Evaluation of NewTechnologies) would be a centre of scientificexcellence dedicated to the independent monitoringof science and technology and would have thenecessary resources to offer the internationalcommunity an alternative or additional perspective ontechnologies and their dissemination.


Endnotes

1 Quoted in Steven H. Schneider et al., eds., Climate ChangeScience and Policy, Island Press, 2010. The quotation is available inan article online:www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/89.Keith.EngineeringThePlanet.p.pdf (accessed27 September 2010).

2 UK Royal Society, Geoengineering the climate: science,governance and uncertainty, 1 September 2009, p. 62; available onthe Internet:http://royalsociety.org/document.asp?tip=0&id=8729

3 See Institute of Mechanical Engineers, “Climate Change: Have WeLost the Battle?” November 2009, available athttp://www.imeche.org/Libraries/Key_Themes/IMechE_MAG_Report.sflb.ashx

4 NAS, Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation,Adaptation and the Science Base,” Washington DC, 1992 , quotedin Lenton and Vaughan, The Radiative Forcing potential ofdifference climate engineering options,” Atmospheric Chemistryand Physics Discussions, 9, 1-50, 2009, p. 3.

5 UK Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: Science,Governance and Uncertainty, London 2009, p. ix.

6 http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2009geoengineeringclimate_amsstatement.html

7 David W. Keith (2001). Geoengineering and carbon management:Is there a meaningful distinction? Greenhouse Gas ControlTechnologies: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference. D.Williams, B. Durie, P. McMullan, C. Paulson and A. Smith eds.,CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia, p. 1192-1197.Available athttp://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Geoengineering.html

8 This definition was offered in response to the report of the Houseof Commons Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science andSkills, Engineering: turning ideas into reality. See GovernmentResponse to the Committee’s Fourth Report (HC 759); availableathttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdius/759/759.pdf, p. 11.

9 IPCC Co-chairs of Working Groups I, II and III, “Proposal for anIPCC Expert Meeting on Geoengineering,” IPCC-XXXII/Doc. 5(3.IX.2010) available athttp://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session32/doc05_p32_proposal_EM_on_geoengineering.pdf.

10 James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History ofWeather and Climate Control,” New York, Columbia UniversityPress, 2010, p. 228.

11 Ibid.12 This is the case with UK House of Commons Committee on

Science and Technology in The Regulation of Geoengineering',HC 221, Fifth Report of Session 2009-10, on Thursday 18 March2010. This conclusion is the opposite of the recommendations ofETC Group and also that of the Memorandum submitted by Dr.James Lee to the Committee, both reproduced in this publication,available at http://www.climateresponsefund.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=152&Itemid=89

13 Simon Terry, Restoring the Atmosphere: Dangerous ClimateChange and the New Governance Required, SustainabilityCouncil of New Zealand, August 2009, p. 53.

14 See Enclyclopedia Britanica online athttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/187549/engineering

15 See Vandana Shiva debate Gwynn Dyer on Democracy Now athttp://www.handsoffmotherearth.org/2010/07/vandana-shiva-debates-geoengineering-with-gwynne-dyer-on-democracy-now/

16 www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id= can-coal-and-clean-air-coexist-china

17 See for example the International Performance Assessment forGeologic Storage of CO2, which was set up to provide“independent” advice and standard setting and is funded by theConservative governments of Canada and Saskatchewan and byRoyal Dutch Shell. Such industry sponsored think tanks misleadthe public by claiming that long-term storage risks have beenoverstated. http://www.ipac-co2.com/Pages/Home.aspx

18 See Gary Shaffer, “Long-term effectiveness and consequences ofcarbon dioxide sequestration”, Nature Geoscience, 3, 464 - 467(2010) Published online: 27 June 2010 | doi:10.1038/ngeo896and Science Daily, “Carbon sequestration: Boon or Burden?” 28June 2010, available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100627155110.htm

19 The reduction targets amount to an average of five per centagainst 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. Seehttp://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php

20 The World Bank estimates that 75% of the 140% rise in worldfood prices between 2002 and 2008 was due to agrofuelproduction. See Asbjorn Eide, “The Right to Food and the Impactof Liquid Agrofuels. (Biofuels),” FAO, Rome, 2008, available athttp://www.fao.org/righttofood/publi08/Right_to_Food_and_Biofuels.pdf and Olivier de Schutter, Background Note: Analysis ofthe World Food Crisis by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rightto Food, available at http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/otherdocuments/1-srrtfnoteglobalfoodcrisis-2-5-08.pdf

21 http://unfccc.int/files/press/backgrounders/application/pdf/fact_sheet_on_technology.pdf


22 UNFCCC, Clean Development Mechanism: 2008 in Brief, p. 3,available at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/08_cdm_in_brief.pdf

23 In 2008 for example, three quarters of the projects went to China,India, Brazil and Mexico. Fewer than 3% of projects have gone toAfrica. See UNFCCC, Clean Development Mechanism: 2008 inBrief available at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/08_cdm_in_brief.pdf

24 For additional analysis see http://www.redd-monitor.org.25 James Fleming, “The Climate Engineers,” Wilson Quarterly,

spring 2007, available online: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=231274

26 Ibid. The rest of this section relies heavily on Fleming’s article.27 Edward Teller, Lowell Wood and Roderick Hyde, “Global

Warming and Ice Ages: I. Prospects For Physics-Based ModulationOf Global Change,” 15 August 1997.

28 P.J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature, Vol. 415, 3 January2002.

29 M.I. Hoffert, K. Caldeira, et al. “Advanced Technology Paths toGlobal Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet,”Science, Vol. 298, 1 November 2002, pp. 981-987, and P.J.Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature, Vol. 415, 3 January 2002.

30 E. Teller, R. Hyde and L. Wood, “Active Climate Stabilization:Practical Physics-Based Approaches to Prevention of ClimateChange,” 18 April 2002.

31 Eli Kintisch, Hack the Planet, Wiley, 2010.32 P.J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur

Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?”Climatic Change, 2006.

33 William J. Broad, “How to Cool a Planet (Maybe),” The NewYork Times, June 27, 2006.

34 UK Science and Technology Committee Announcement, “UKand US Tteam Uup in Unique Ccollaboration onGgeoengineering,”18 March 2010, available athttp://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/ committees-archive/science-technology/s-t-pn27-100318/

35 Publication searches were conducted August 25, 2009. Forscholarly articles: Google Scholar for the years 1994-2001 and2002-present (search terms “geoengineering” and “climate”“change” in the following categories: Biology, Life Sciences, andEnvironmental Science; Chemistry and Materials Science;Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics; Physics,Astronomy, and Planetary Science; Social Sciences, Arts, andHumanities). For major media coverage: Lexis Nexis for the years1994-2001 and 2002-present (search terms “geoengineering”“climate” “change”) in newspapers stories (major worldnewspapers), weblogs and magazines.

36 William J. Broad, “How to Cool a Planet (Maybe),” The NewYork Times, June 27, 2006.

37 See Fareed Zakaria’s long interview with Nathan Myhrvold onCNN, the day after Copenhagen failed athttp://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/fareedzakaria/site/2009/12/20/gps.podcast.12.20.cnn?iref=allsearch

38 Margaret Munro, ”Plans to cool planet heat up geoengineeringdebate,” The Vancouver Sun, 11May 2010 available athttp://www.vancouversun.com/news/Plans+cool+planet+heat+geoengineering+debate/3014922/story.html

39 http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/FICER.html40 Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, 8 April 9 2009. See “Obama

looks at climate engineering,” available online athttp://www.physorg.com/news158416336.html

41 Steven Chu discussed geoengineering at the St James’s PalaceNobel Laureate Symposium in London held on May 26-28, 2009.

42 See www.americasclimatechoices.org/GeoEng%20Agenda%206-11-09.pdf

43 National Research Council of the National Academies, Advancingthe Science of Climate Change, Washington, D.C., 2010.

44 J. J. Blackstock, D. S. Battisti, K. Caldeira, D. M. Eardley, J. I.Katz, D. W. Keith, A. A. N. Patrinos, D. P. Schrag, R. H. Socolowand S. E. Koonin, Climate Engineering Responses to ClimateEmergencies (Novim, 2009), archived online at:http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.5140

45 See Congressional Research Service: Geoengineering:Governance and Technology Policy, CRS Report for CongressR41371, 16 August 2010 and private correspondence betweenETC group and Timothy Persons, Chief Scientist, USGAO, 3August 2010. See also Eli Kintisch, “What will happen whengeoengineering comes to Washington?” 24 September 2010,available at http://www.slate.com/id/2268477.

46 Accessed 27 September 2010 athttp://carbonsequestration.blogspot.com/2008/02/uk-environmental-minister-ocean.html

47 See Recommendations 24 and 25 of House of CommonsInnovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee,Engineering: turning ideas into reality, Fourth Report of Session2008–09, Volume 1, p. 117.

48 See House of Commons Science and Technology Committee,The Regulation of Geoengineering, 18 March 2010, available athttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf

49 For more information, see ETC Group news release, “GermanGeo-engineers Show Iron Will to Defy Global UN Moratorium,”8 Jan. 2009, available online at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=710

50 See http://www.irgc.org/Geoengineering.html51 Available online at www.royalsociety.org/

displaypagedoc.asp?id=35151


52 Even geoengineering schemes such as covering deserts in reflectivepolyethylene-aluminum or putting mirrors in space, for example,are not dismissed from future consideration and therefore could beeligible for research funding from the UK government.

53 Personal email communication between Royal Society Director ofScience Policy and ETC Group.

54 http://www.iop.org/Media/Press%20Releases/press_36613.html55 “Geoengineering the world out of climate change” in World

Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change,Box 7.1, p. 301; online athttp://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2010/0,,menuPK:5287748~pagePK:64167702~piPK:64167676~theSitePK:5287741,00.html

56 UNEP, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, online athttp://www.unep.org/compendium2009/

57 Ibid., p. 53.58 Andew C. Revkin, “Branson on the Power of Biofuels and Elders,”

Dot Earth Blog, The New York Times, October 15, 2009, onlineat http://dotEarth.blogs.nytimes.com

59 http://newt.org/tabid/102/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3475/Default.aspx

60 Available at http://fixtheclimate.com/component-1/the-solutions-new-research/climate-engineering

61 Alex Steffen, “Geoengineering and the New Climate Denialism,”29 April 2009; available on the Internet athttp://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009784.html

62 Chris Bowlby, “A quick fix for global warming,” BBC News, 31July 2008; available on the Internet athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7533600.stm

63 GRAIN, "Small farmers can cool the planet," December 2009,available online at http://www.grain.org/o/?id=93

64 ETC Group, Who Will Feed Us? Questions for the Food andClimate Crises, November 2009,http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/4921 and Via Campesina &GRAIN, Small farmers can cool the planet, November 2009,http://www.grain.org/o/?id=97

65 Delegation of Bolivia: Climate Negotiations, June 7 2010available at http://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/delegation-of-bolivia-climate-negotiations-agriculture

66 ETC Group Communiqué # 99, ”Patenting the ’Climate Genes’… and Capturing the Climate Agenda” May/June 2008, availableonline at http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/687

67 Dominic Woolf et al., Sustainable biochar to mitigate globalclimate change, Nature Communications 1, article number 56, 10August 2010. NGOs concerned about the land grab implicationsof this study criticized the article’s assumptions and conclusionshere: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5198

68 A. L. Strong, J. J. Cullen and S. W. Chisholm, “OceanFertilization: Science, Policy, and Commerce,” Oceanography Vol.22 No. 3 pp. 236-261.

69 This list of impacts is largely drawn from the followingpublications: Aaron Strong, Sallie Chisholm, Charles Miller &John Cullen, “Ocean fertilization: time to move on,” Nature, 461,17 September 2009, p. 347-348 (doi: 10.1038/461347a). May beaccessed here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7262/full/461347a.html and “Scientific Synthesis of the Impactsof Ocean Fertilization on Marine Biodiversity,” Convention onBiological Diversity, Technical Series 45, 2009. May be accessedhere: http://www.cbd.int/doc/publications/cbd-ts-45-en.pdfDenman, K. 2008. Climate change, ocean processes, and oceaniron fertilization. Marine Ecology Progress Series 234:219–225;Charles G. Trick, Brian D. Bill, William P. Cochlan, Mark L.Wells, Vera L. Trainer, and Lisa D. Pickell, "Iron enrichmentstimulates toxic diatom production in high nitrate low chlorophyllareas," PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ofthe United States of America) 1 February 2010(10.1073/pnas.0910579107). Available at:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851856Sallie Chisholm Paul G. Falkowski, John J. Cullen, “DiscreditingOcean Fertilization,” Science, Vol. 294, 12 October 2001, pp. 309-310.

70 David W. Keith, “Photophoretic levitation of engineered aerosolsfor geoengineering,” Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences, Vol. 107 no. 38, September 21, 2010, pp. 16428-16431.

71 A. Robock, M. Bunzl, B. Kravitz, G. L. Stenchikov, “A Test forGeoengineering?” Science, Vol. 327 no. 5965, January 29, 2010,pp. 530-531.

72 J. J. Blackstock, D. S. Battisti, K. Caldeira, D. M. Eardley, J. I.Katz, D. W. Keith, A. A. N. Patrinos, D. P. Schrag, R. H. Socolow,S. E. Koonin, Climate Engineering Responses to ClimateEmergencies, 31 July 2009.

73 See Robock, Alan, 2008: 20 reasons why geoengineering may be abad idea. Bull. Atomic Scientists, 64, No. 2, 14-18, 59,doi:10.2968/064002006. This article is updated at Robock, Alan,2009: Testimony before the House Committee on Science andTechnology Hearing, “Geoengineering: Assessing the Implicationsof Large-Scale Climate Intervention,” November 5, 2009, 125. Fora more detailed study on the impact on precipitation see G. Bala,P.B. Duffy and K.E. Taylor, Impact of geoengineering schemes onthe global hyrdrological cycle, PNAS 3 June 2008 105 (22) pp.7664-69

74 P. Rasch, C-C ( Jack) Chen, John Latham, Global TemperatureStabilisation via Cloud Albedo Enhancement GeoengineeringOptions to Respond to Climate Change (Response to NationalAcademy Call), 2009.


75 See ETC Group Press Release, Geoengineering ExperimentsContested at UN meeting in Nairobi: As huge cloud-whiteningexperiment goes public, global coalition urges an immediate halt togeoengineering, 10 May 2010, available online athttp://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5137 . The Times article andthe ETC Group press release provoked a lively debate on thegeoengineering google group which can be reviewed here:http://groups.google.com/group/climateintervention/browse_thread/thread/80bca5d74ea11d93/5c1229f45b51db2f ?#

76 American Meteorological Society, Geoengineering the ClimateSystem, A Policy Statement of the American MeteorologicalSociety (Adopted by the AMS Council on 20 July 2009), availableonline: http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2009geoengineeringclimate_amsstatement.html.

77 Anna Austin, “Unearthing Green Scams,” Biomass Magazine, June2010, on the Internet:http://www.biomassmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3851

78 Briefing by The African Biodiversity Network, Biofuelwatch andthe Gaia Foundation, Biochar Land Grabbing: the impacts onAfrica, November 2009.

79 See NGO Press release, Nature communications article shows truecolour of biochar advocates, 30 August 2010, available athttp://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5198.

80 D. Woolf, J. E. Amonette, F. A. Street-Perrott, J. L., S. Joseph,“Sustainable biochar to mitigate global climate change,” NatureCommunications, 10 August 2010, on the Internet:http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v1/n5/full/ncomms1053.html

81 S. Sohi, E. Lopez-Capel, E, Krull and R. Bo, Biochar, climatechange and soil: A review to guide future research, CSIRO Landand Water Science Report, May 2009.

82 “Open Letter Opposing Asilomar Geoengineering Conference,” 4March 2010. Available online at:http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5080.

83 This terminology, which refers to the group of scientists, retireesand hobbyists actively engaged in the discussion, informally lead byKen Caldeira and David Keith, is from Eli Kintisch, Hack thePlanet: Science’s Best Hope – or Worst Nightmare- for AvertingClimate Catastrophe, Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley and Sons, 2010,p. 8.

84 Lee Lane, for example, who heads the geoengineering program atthe American Enterprise Institute blogged after the Asilomarmeeting, “Managing Climate Engineering will entail many choices,and, as knowledge grows, the system may need frequent finetuning. Expectations and interests will differ by region, andbargaining costs may be high. With too many players, the processcould easily grind to a halt... Geoengineering experimentsshouldn’t require global agreement,” 30 March 2010. Availableonline at: http://blog.american.com/?author=61.

85 Marcia Barinaga, “Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today?”Science, vol. 287, No. 5458, 3 March 2000, pp. 1584-5. Availableonline at http://www.biotech-info.net/asilomar_revisited.html.

86 Michael McCracken, “The Asilomar International Conference onClimate Intervention,” Post Conference Briefing. Available onlineat: www.climate.org/PDF/AsilomarConferenceSummary.pdf.

87 See Joe Romm, “Sole ‘Strategic Partner’ of landmark geo-engineering conference is Australia’s ‘dirty coal’ state of Victoria,”and subsequent articles at: Climate Progress, 15 March 2010.Available online at:http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/15/climate-response-fund-geoengineering-conference-australia-dirty-coal-state-of-victoria/

88 See corporate philosophy athttp://guttmaninitiatives.com/coporatephilosophy.html

89 UK House of Commons, “The Regulation of Geoengineering:Fifth Report of Session 2009-2010,” 10 March 2010, pp. 39-40.Also available online at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf.

90 Ibid., pp. 39-40 and 148.91 USGAO, Climate Change: Preliminary Observations on

Geoengineering Science, Federal Efforts and Governance Issues,Statement of Frank Rusco, Director Natural Resources andEnvironment, 18 March 2010.

92 The Geneva-based International Risk Governance Councilconvened a meeting on geoengineering in April 2009 for whichthere is no public report. In September 2010, however, theorganization released an “opinion piece” by Granger Morgan andKatherine Ricke, “Cooling the Earth Through Solar RadiationManagement: The need for research and an approach to itsgovernance.” Available online at:http://www.irgc.org/IMG/pdf/SRM_Opinion_Piece_web.pdf.The Centre for International Governance Innovation, founded byResearch in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie, sponsored a ChathamHouse session in Waterloo, Canada, in October 2010, whichexplored “emerging geoengineering options” and looked at how“multinational clubs” might replace “all-inclusive internationalnegotiations.”

93 Granger Morgan and Katherine Ricke, op. cit., p. 18.94 According to a study by the World Development Movement, of

the US$7.9 billion that has been committed to specific programs,42% has gone to the World Bank, 47% is loans rather than grants,and less than1% (a mere US$70 million) as been given to the UNAdaptation Fund. This information is available online at:http://www.wdm.org.uk/climate-justice/long-way-go

95 See IMPLICC - Implications and risks of engineering solarradiation to limit climate change at http://implicc.zmaw.de/

96 The figure is from Juliet Eilperin, “Threat of global warmingsparks U.S. interest in geoengineering,” Washington Post, 3October 2010. Available online at:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/03/AR2010100303437.html


97 See Ipsos MORI, “Experiment Earth? Report on a PublicDialogue on Geoengineering,” August 2010. Available online at:http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/geoengineering-dialogue-final-report.pdf

98 This grant was awarded to Professor PM Forster, University ofLeeds, School of Earth and Environment, “SANDPIT: IntegratedAssessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP),” project numberEP/I014721/1. More information available online at:http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/I014721/1. The grant runs from 1 October 2010 until 2014.

99 Personal communication with Ehsan Khan, US Department ofEnergy, 28 January 2010.

100 See comments by Alan Robock to the US House ofRepresentatives Committee on Science and Technology,“Geoengineering: Assessing the Implications of Large-ScaleClimate Intervention,” November 5, 2009, 125 pp. Availableonline at: http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2668. PDF of completetestimony available online at: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockTestimony.pdf.

101 Eli Kintisch, “With Emissions Caps on Ice, Is GeoengineeringNext Step in D.C. Climate Debate?” ScienceInsider, 27 September2010, available online at http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/09/with-emissions-caps-on-ice-is.html

102 David Keith, Ed Parsons and Granger Morgan, “Research onGlobal Sun Block Needed Now,” Nature, Vol. 463, 28 Jan 2010.Available online (to subscribers) at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/463426a.html.

103 Juan Moreno Cruz and David Keith, “Climate Policy UnderUncertainty: A Case for Geoengineering,” unpublishedmanuscript. Available online (via password) at:http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/preprints/117.Moreno-Cruz.ClimPolUncert-CaseForGeoeng.p.pdf

104 Aaron Strong, Sallie Chisholm, Charles Miller and John Cullen,Ocean fertilization: time to move on, Nature, Vol. 461, 17Setember 2009, pp. 347-348.

105 See ETC Group press release, “Top-down Planet Hackers Callfor Bottom-up Governance,” February 11 2010. Available onlineat: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5073

106 David Keith, Ed Parsons and Granger Morgan, “Research onGlobal Sun Block Needed Now,” Nature, Vol. 463, 28, January2010. Available online (to subscribers) at:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/463426a.html

107 Alan Robock, Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, Georgiy L.Stenchikov, “A Test for Geoengineering?” Science, Vol. 327. no.5965, 29 January 2010, pp. 530-31.

108 Jeff Goodell, How to Cool the Planet, Boston: HoughtonMifflin Harcourt, 2010, pp. 207-208.

109 James Fleming, Fixing the Sky, New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2010, pp. 167-8.

110 Jeff Goodell, How to Cool the Planet, Boston: HoughtonMifflin Harcourt, 2010. p. 211.

111 See Virgin Earth Challenge athttp://www.virgin.com/subsites/virginearth. No prize winner hadbeen announced ten months after the deadline (8 January 20100.

112 Ken Caldeira and John Latham are both listed as seniorinventors on the Company’s website. Seehttp://www.intellectualventures.com/WhoWeAre/Inventors.aspx.

113 See Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research, availableat http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/FICER.html and RoyalSociety, TWAS, EDF, The Solar Radiation ManagementGovernance Initiative. Not available online.

114 J. J. Blackstock, D. S. Battisti, K. Caldeira, D. M. Eardley, J. I.Katz, D. W. Keith, A. A. N. Patrinos, D. P. Schrag, R. H. Socolowand S. E. Koonin, “Climate Engineering Responses to ClimateEmergencies,” Novim (2009). Available online at:http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.5140

115 Media Advisory, CIGI Hosts Conference on Climate Change,17 September 2010.

116 Matthew O. Berger, “Geoengineering May Represent Earth'sBest Plan B,” IPS, 30 September, 2010. Available online at:http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53021

117 Information on Cquestrate can be found online at:www.cquestrate.com. Information on the Oxford GeoengineeringInstitute, also run by Tim Kruger, can be found online at:http://www.oxfordgeoengineering.org. Kruger was one of theauthors promoting a set of principles for governance that have beeninfluential amongst the geoclique, including the astonishingnotion that geoengineering is a public good.

118 Exxon Mobil discloses that it funded papers, for example by H.S.Kheshgi on disposing of CO2 in the ocean by increasing itsalkalinity. Kheshgi is cited as an expert in the Royal Society report.See ExxonMobil contributed papers on climate science, availableonline at: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/investor_issues_contributedpapers.aspx

119 “Geoengineering: Global Salvation or Ruin,” a round table at theCommonwealth Club, broadcast by Fora.tv. Available for viewingat: http://fora.tv/2010/02/23/Geoengineering_Global_Salvation_or_Ruin

120 Keith Driver and John Gaunt, “Bringing Biochar Projects intothe Carbon Market Place,” Carbon Consulting LLC, Blue Source,Carbon War Room, ConocoPhillips Canada, May 2010.

121 Holly Buck, “Framing Geoengineering in the media: Spectacle,Solution, Tragedy?” unpublished manuscript, Lund University, p. 9.

122 MIT scientist Sallie Chisholm: “They invited me at the lastminute and I think it was because they suddenly realized the wholemeeting was made up of white men,” in Jeff Goodell, op.cit. p. 191.


123 Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, Superfreakanomics: GlobalCooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers ShouldBuy Insurance (New York: Harper Collins), 2009. NEEDREFERENCE PAGE NUMBER

124 Jeff Goodell, op.cit, pp. 213-214.125 Karen L. Henwood, Karen Anne Parkhill and Nick F. Pidgeon,

“Science, technology and risk perception: From gender differencesto the effects made by gender,” Equal Opportunities International,Vol 27, no 8, 2008, p. 663.

126 See Institute on Governance, Governance definition athttp://iog.ca/en/about-us/governance/governance-definition.

127 David Keith and John Virgoe, for example, both make thisargument before the UK Parliamentary Committee studying theregulation of geoengineering. See UK House of Commons, “TheRegulation of Geoengineering: Fifth Report of Session 2009-2010,” 10 March 2010. Also available online at:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf.

128 The initial announcement of the conference stated, “ThisConference is being convened to discuss and develop a set ofvoluntary guidelines, or best practices, for the least harmful andlowest risk conduct of research and testing of proposed climateintervention and geoengineering technologies.” Letter fromMichael MacCracken, chair of the Scientific OrganizingCommittee, November 14, 2009.

129 “Open Letter Opposing Asilomar Geoengineering Conference,”4 March 2010. Available online at:http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5080

130 See final statement by the Scientific Organizing Committee,issued 26 March 2010, which does not even mention the voluntarystandards the meeting had been convened to discuss. Availableonline at:http://www.climateresponsefund.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=152&Itemid=89

131 See for examples, Claire Parkinson, Coming Climate Crisis:Consider the past, Beware of the Big Fix, Lanham, Rowman &Littlefield, 2010, Chapter 6.

132 See “Let’s look before we leap: Civil society calls for technologyassessment in any Copenhagen deal,” 10 December 2009, online athttp://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/4956

133 The declaration (like the Universal Declaration of HumanRights) is not a treaty and therefore does not have states as parties.It does however have the force of international law.


Notes:

ETC Group www.etcgroup.org

ETC Group Action Group on Erosion, Technology & Concentration

ETC Group is an international civil societyorganization. We address the globalsocioeconomic and ecological issuessurrounding new technologies with specialconcern for their impact on indigenouspeoples, rural communities and bio-diversity. We investigate ecological erosion(including the erosion of cultures andhuman rights), the development of newtechnologies and we monitor globalgovernance issues including corporateconcentration and trade in technologies. We operate at the global political level and haveconsultative status with several UN agencies and treaties. We work closely with other civil society organizations andsocial movements, especially in Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica. We have offices in Canada, USA, Mexico andPhilippines.

Other ETC Group publications on geoengineering are at:

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/issues/geoengineering

Contact:431 Gilmour St, Second FloorOttawa, ON K2P 0R5 Canada Tel: 1-613-241-2267 (Eastern Time)Email: [email protected] Website: www.etcgroup.org

BANG!In 2008, ETC Group and its partners convened aninternational meeting of civil society activists in Montpellier

France under the title, BANG – signifying theconvergence of technologies at the nano-scale –

specifically, Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes.At the meeting, ETC Group agreed to

prepare a series of background documentson major new technologies that couldassist our partners and governments in theglobal South in understanding these

developments and responding to them.This report is one of the studies.

The full set is:

Communiqué # 103 – Geopiracy : The Case AgainstGeoengineering

Communiqué # 104 – The New Biomassters: SyntheticBiology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity andLivelihoods.

Communiqué # 105 – The Big Downturn? Nanogeopolitics2010

ETC Group has also completed a book, BANG, describingthe impact of technological convergence over the next 25years. While the book is not science fiction, it uses fiction todescribe four different scenarios for the next quarter-century.“BANG” has been published in German by Oekom with thetitle “Next BANG”.

ETC Group aims to publish all these reports in English,French and Spanish.

39698406 Geopiracy the Case Against Geoengineering

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Transcript of 39698406 Geopiracy the Case Against Geoengineering