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Human development, inspiration, invention, and aspiration have resulted in a rapidly growing population, with each generation aspiring to greater wealth and well-being, so having greater needs than the previous generation. Amongst the resulting negative impacts are over-exploitation of planetary resources and the build-up of gases in the atmosphere and oceans to the extent that they are changing earth’s climate and ocean chemistry (IPCC 2007). However, the history of humanity’s relationship to the environment has shown that, if threatened, society can respond rapidly to environmental risks, introducing better practices, controls, regulations, and even global protocols, for example the reduction of city smog, the move from leaded to unleaded petrol, and reduction of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) production to reduce loss of the ozone layer. Nearly all of these changes have led to direct and obvious positive gain to human health and well-being which has been a driving force in the production, agreement and implementation of the policies and laws that have brought them about. The spatial scale or ‘ecological footprint’ of these risks has increased with time, such that international agreements and protocols, like the Montreal Protocol for CFCs, have been increasingly necessary for reducing them. Along with the globalization of agriculture, business, industry, and financial markets and the expansion of the human population goes the globalization of risk to the environment. Climate change and ocean acidification are global issues with solutions that are only possible through global agreements and action. Substantial proportions of nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) were used to secure the banks and major industries in the economic crises that have swept the world in the last few years, far greater than the 1 to 2% per annum estimated to be required to mitigate climate change (Stern 2006). However, the response to the economic crisis does show that global society can react rapidly when it believes it is necessary. The question is, when do society and governments deem it necessary to act, and to act together? One issue may be time, the perceived immediacy of the crisis.

Ocean acidification caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the ocean is an important global change problem (Kleypas et al. 1999; Caldeira and Wickett 2003; Doney et al. 2009). Ongoing ocean acidification is closely linked to global warming, as acidification and warming are primarily caused by continued anthropogenic emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel burning (Marland et al. 2008 ), land use, and land-use change (Strassmann et al. 2007). Future ocean acidification will be determined by past and future emissions of CO2 and their redistribution within the earth system and the ocean. Calculation of the potential range of ocean acidification requires consideration of both a plausible range of emissions scenarios and uncertainties in earth system responses, preferably by using results from multiple scenarios and models. The goal of this chapter is to map out the spatiotemporal evolution of ocean acidification for different metrics and for a wide range of multigas climate change emissions scenarios from the integrated assessment models (Nakićenović 2000; Van Vuuren et al. 2008b). By including emissions reduction scenarios that are among the most stringent in the current literature, this chapter explores the potential benefits of climate mitigation actions in terms of how much ocean acidification can be avoided and how much is likely to remain as a result of inertia within the energy and climate systems. The longterm impacts of carbon emissions are addressed using so-called zero-emissions commitment scenarios and pathways leading to stabilization of atmospheric CO 2. Discussion will primarily rely on results from the cost-efficient Bern2.5CC model (Plattner et al. 2008) and the comprehensive carbon cycle– climate model of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), CSM1.4-carbon (Steinacher et al. 2009; Frölicher and Joos 2010). The magnitude of the human perturbation of the climate system is well documented by observations (Solomon e t al. 2007). Carbon emissions from human activities force the atmospheric composition, climate, and the geochemical state of the ocean towards conditions that are unique for at least the last million years (see Chapter 2).

Humans have dramatically changed Earth’s environment, on the land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere. The rate of change of these perturbations in the Anthropocene is unlike any in our geological past. This also means humans need to develop plans to counter the most severe effects. Geoengineering is probably the best example of the search for a solution to such a self-created problem. However, a long-term solution most likely requires a shift in our thinking towards sustainable development, putting environmental cost before capital gains and developing a more cyclic economy. This requires changes in the way we define and perceive the interaction between the biogeochemistry of Earth system and our own economies.

The term geoengineering lacks a precise definition but is widely held to imply the intentional manipulation of the environment on a global scale. For most of the last 30 years, there has been a wide consensus that such manipulation would be a bad idea. However, in August 2006, Paul Crutzen, the climate scientist and Nobel laureate, published an article that reignited debate about whether we should explore geoengineering “solutions” as a response to the escalating climate-change problem. This was soon followed by other contributions and proposals, and now interest in geoengineering has become widespread, in both academia and the world of policy. As a result, Time magazine recently listed geoengineering as one of its “Ten Ideas That Are Changing the World.” Geoengineering is a relatively new and underexplored topic. This is true both of the science and the ethics. Just as we are not close to fully understanding exactly how to geoengineer if we were to choose to do so, or what the impacts of any geoengineering scheme would be, so we are also not sure how to understand the normative dimensions of undertaking geoengineering. Indeed, at this point almost no moral and political philosophy has even been attempted. In such a setting, it is useful to get some sense of the moral terrain: of what the major issues might be, of how they might be investigated, and so of how understanding might move forward. This is the main aim of this chapter. To pursue it, I shall focus on one prominent argument for geoengineering, raising a number of serious challenges that have wider application. In my view, these challenges are sufficient to seriously threaten the argument, at least in its most prominent and limited form, and so shift the burden of proof back onto proponents of geoengineering. Still, I want to make clear from the outset that my purpose is not to determine whether the pursuit of geoengineering can, in the end, be morally justified.

This chapter examines the role of geoengineering in the mitigation of climate change. It begins with an overview of the state of geoengineering science before turning to the politics of geoengineering, with particular emphasis on scientific assessment and regulation and the need for regulatory treaties. It argues that norms to govern deployment of geoengineering systems are necessary, which might arise through intensive research organised by the academies of sciences in key countries.

Many Civilizations Have Come and gone over the past 6,000 years; some declined rapidly, some lingered, and a few renewed and rebuilt. These rise- and- fall cycles have been variously attributed to the typical increase in complexity of a society over time as pro­cedural solutions to successive layers of problems accumulate and eventually stifle purpose and productivity, or to heightened social stratification, inequality, and consequent uprisings. But beyond the city walls are other explanations. Many societies have overexploited and degraded their natural environmental base; in other cases, natu­ral changes in regional climates and environments have impaired harvests, caused water shortages, mobilized epidemics, or fomented political disorder. In the twenty- first century, populations around the world face un­precedented but broadly foreseeable changes in climate on a global scale, with impacts compounded by other environmental and demographic pressures. We cannot predict the consequences for human populations, but they may be dire— especially if runaway climate change occurs. The modest warming that has occurred since the mid- 1970s, associated with increased severity of weather disasters, is already affecting human health and safety, via heat waves and other extreme weather events, physical injury, child undernutrition, changes in infectious disease ranges and seasonality, mental trauma and depression, and population displace­ment and lost livelihoods. Can we find another, safer way forward? Our elaborate primate brain with its unique higher- cognition planning capacity enables us, when pushed, to imagine alternative futures and to behave flexibly and seek transformative changes. But other human foibles and frailties inter­vene. These include the widespread assumption of unlimited economic growth, an instinct to retain current social and cultural structures, and the limitations of rapid- turnover democratic government. Structural impediments also persist: the continuing poverty and illiteracy of sev­eral billion people; the heterogeneity of cultures, beliefs, and political systems; and modes of scientific research not yet well suited to studying complex environmental and social systems. These make the task ahead more complex, but not impossible. To make headway will depend on people and communities under­standing climate change in terms closer to home. Talk of emissions, trajectories, scenarios, ocean acidification, targets, and timetables does not connect with daily lives.

Apprehensions have been multiplying rapidly that we are approaching a crisis in our relationship with nature, one that could have potentially catastrophic results for the sustainability of civilization and even the habitability of the planet. Much of the concern is rightfully focused on changes in the atmosphere caused by human activities. Only a century after the discovery of the stratosphere, only five decades after the invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and only two decades after atmospheric chemists warned of the destructive nature of chlorine and other compounds, we fear that ozone in the stratosphere is being damaged by human activity. Only a century after the first models of the carbon cycle were developed, only three decades after regular CO2 measurements began at Mauna Loa Observatory, and only two decades after climate modelers first doubled the CO2 in a computerized atmosphere, we fear that the Earth may experience a sudden and possibly catastrophic warming caused by industrial pollution. These and other environmental problems were brought to our attention mainly by scientists and engineers, but the problems belong to us all. Recently, policy-oriented social scientists, public officials, and diplomats have turned their attention to the complex human dimensions of these issues. New interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations have arisen between scientists and policymakers to examine the extremely challenging issues raised by global change. There has been a rising tide of literature—scholarly works, new journals, textbooks, government documents, treaties, popular accounts—some quite innovative, others derivative and somewhat repetitious. This has resulted in growing public awareness of environmental issues, new understanding of global change science and policy, widespread concerns over environmental risks, and recently formulated plans to intervene in the global environment through various forms of social and behavioral engineering, and possibly geoengineering. Global change is now at the center of an international agenda to understand, predict, protect, and possibly control the global environment. The changing nature of global change—the historical dimension—has not received adequate attention. Most writing addresses current issues in either science or policy; much of it draws on a few authoritative scientific statements such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); almost none of it is informed by historical sensibility.

Enlightenment ideas of climate and culture, developed in an era of European expansion, were stimulated by the writings of explorers, colonists, and travelers. Initially, colonists were confused and confounded by the cold winters and harsh storms. The New World was the object of considerable disdain for many European elites. Convincing them that the North American continent was not a frozen, primitive, or degenerate wasteland became a crucial element in American apologetics. The notion that a harsh climate could be improved by human activity—draining the marshes, clearing the forests, and cultivating the soil—was a major issue in colonial and early America and remained so until the middle of the nineteenth century. If the climate could truly be transformed, the implications were enormous, involving the health, wellbeing, and prosperity of all. There were contrarians, however, who called these ideas just so much wishful thinking. Early settlers in North America found the climate harsher, the atmosphere more variable, and the storms both more frequent and more violent than in similar latitudes in the Old World. In 1644–45, the Reverend John Campanius of Swedes’ Fort (Delaware) described mighty winds, unknown in Europe, which “came suddenly with a dark-blue cloud and tore up oaks that had a girt of three fathoms.” Another colonist in New Sweden, Thomas Campanius Holm, noted that when it rains “the whole sky seems to be on fire, and nothing can be seen but smoke and flames.” James MacSparran, a missionary to Rhode Island for thirty-six years until his death in 1757, spent considerable energy warning colonists against emigrating to America. He found the American climate “intemperate,” with excessive heat and cold, sudden violent changes of weather, terrible and mischievous thunder and lightning, and unwholesome air—all “destructive to human bodies.” While new settlers in all countries and climates are subject to many hardships, Dr. Alexander Hewatt observed that the hardships experienced by the first settlers of Carolina “must have equalled, if not surpassed, everything of the kind to which men in any age have been exposed. . . . During the summer months the climate is so sultry, that no European, without hazard, can endure the fatigues of labouring in the open air.”

I have chosen to conclude these essays just as the well-known IGY was getting started. Of course, much has changed since then. There is little to gain, however, by attempting to recount the recent policy history of global change, at least from my perspective as a historian of science and technology. I have tried in this book to provide fresh perspectives on the more distant past, not to replicate the recent literature on global change. Although I am actively engaged in projects sponsored by the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union that document the recent past, I have little inclination to attempt to interpret it. Consequently I include in this chapter only the briefest sketch of the global cooling scare after 1958 and the return of a global warming discourse in the 1980s. I believe the metaphor of apprehension (awareness, understanding, fear, intervention) applies quite well to a number of current environmental issues, and I will point to some of them by way of conclusion. I was asked once after a seminar whether, as a historian, I could predict the eventual demise of today’s global change discourse, since there had been so many changes in the past. I responded that history has no predictive value, but does indeed provide valuable perspectives to its readers. History is first and foremost the study of change. For students of global change, history can serve as an inspirational story of how far we have come. It can also serve as a humbling reminder that change is indeed inevitable in our lives, in the Earth system, and in our ideas and institutions. Although I am professionally engaged with the past, I am still a citizen of my own age—an age of vastly enhanced environmental awareness. Like many of my contemporaries, I believe that humanity is a part of, not apart from, nature; that human activity is placing tremendous stress on global biophysical systems; and that we have an ethical responsibility to each other and to future generations to live sustainably, in harmony with the Earth. Your guesses about the future are probably as good as and perhaps better than mine.

This chapter addresses different sorts of justificatory reasons – consequentialist and nonconsequentialist – with the objective of demonstrating how consequentialist reasoning has permeated the environmental discourse. It uses the cases of geoengineering and vaccination (from in imaginary deadly illness – the Schmoo) to illustrate how ethical orientations toward the good often come up short when seeking to justify complicated interventions that encroach on human lives.

This chapter uses climate change governance to illustrate how policymakers can engage in an integrated analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of defining agency jurisdiction along each of the dimensions for different governmental functions. In particular, the chapter assesses and considers alternatives to the interjurisdictional frameworks that have begun to develop, with a three-part focus on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and geoengineering activities. Though undoubtedly contextual within these three general categories of emerging governance, each presents challenges and implies different tradeoffs that are likely to be more consistent with particular types of allocations. The chapter extrapolates from the insights from the book's earlier case studies and draws plausible inferences based on justifications for particular allocations to propose configurations for these three emerging regulatory regimes. Finally, the chapter explains how climate change governance illustrates the merit of integrating into institutional design strategies that promote learning about the efficacy of adopted allocations.

Clare Heyward, and Steve Rayner, and Julian Savulescu examine the legitimacy and social control over the research, development and eventual deployment of geo-engineering to reduce human caused climate change. They believe that it is permissible in principle but all geo-engineering R&D should be subject to some sort of governance given its potential to affect everyone in the world. They defend the Oxford Principles of ethical-political decision-making principles. 1) Geo-engineering is in the public interest and should be regulated as a public good; 2) there should be public participation in geo-engineering decision-making; 3) geo-engineering research should be transparent and available to the public; 4) risk assessments should be conducted by independent bodies, and be directed toward both the environmental and socio-economic impacts of research and deployment; and 5) the legal, social, and ethical implications of geo-engineering should be addressed before a project is undertaken or technology deployed. The authors then compare the Oxford Principles favorably the three main alternative models that guide geoengineering development. They argue that it has a greater scope of application than the alternatives and better lend themselves to action-guiding recommendations and regulations, appropriate to different technologies -- while preserving longstanding environmental and political values.

The chapter focuses on climate change in general and geoengineering in particular. It explains who we are in the context of ethical complaints about our understanding of global environmental change. The chapter also considers some categories of negative ethical appraisal to which failure makes humanity susceptible, including those involving tarnishing, marring, and blighting evils.

This essay analyzes the shift from incremental to exponential accelerations in atmospheric CO₂ and its implications for the science and governance of climate change. It examines some of the models and tools that scientists are developing to address and manage environmental uncertainty, as well as their emerging forms of scientific monitoring of increasingly unpredictable ecosystemic behaviors. A central question concerns how such sciences contribute to prospective thinking about how natural systems and societal infrastructures might adapt to imminent ecological dangers linked to climate change. The essay shows how a scientific predication toward ecosystemic “tipping points” has ushered in a new kind of intellectual labor, a horizoning work, involving the construction of empirical tools and appropriate “scaling rules” for recognizing and keeping a “safe distance” from unsafe ecosystemic thresholds. Here the notion of horizon acts as a kind of contemporary equipment for managing and sometimes mitigating complex futures. The horizon also sets a stage for contemplating relations between nonparametric realities and a social science of survival. With a public increasingly enamored with magic bullet solutions to the problem of climate change, the essay’s conclusion explores alternative frameworks of prevention and biomanipulation as antidotes to intensifying pressures to geoengineer.

In the contemporary discourse of sacrifice in the context of climate change and environmental sustainability, geoengineering is believed to be a technology-based means to change and control a climate system. Geoengineering is getting attention and consideration worldwide from media outlets, commentators, and policymakers. The author explains that a technological development like geoengineering is a sacrifice-free form of action that fixes environmental concerns and reduces the burden. The author further discusses three hidden technological sacrifices: material, political, and existential.

Beginning with the coining of “terraforming” by science fiction writer Jack Williamson, this chapter explores the boundaries of the term in scientific discourse and in fiction, focusing attention on its significance for stories of interplanetary colonisation. It compares terraforming with its Earthbound counterpart, geoengineering, thus highlighting how science fiction explores modes of relating to Earth’s environment. It introduces James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and explains its significance for terraforming, and explores the nature of science fiction’s environmental engagement and its intersections with ecocritical concerns. It also introduces the concept of nature’s otherness and of landscaping, and connects the latter to Bakhtin’s chronotope, thus delineating an analytical framework for exploring how space and time is invested with human value and meaning in science fictional narratives.