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Panelists Call for Creation of World Commission to Handle Solar Radiation Management
›“Right now, it’s the Wild West in regard to governance with geoengineering,” said Paul Wapner, a professor at the School of International Service at American University at a recent panel about solar radiation management (SRM) at the Arizona State University’s Washington Center. According to the Governing Solar Radiation Management report which was the focus of the event, SRM, which theoretically would cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space, may be a viable last-resort option if climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts fail. Wapner said that “there’s a danger in SRM, there’s a danger in climate change. And, balancing those risks is part of the exercise and will continue to be part of the exercise.”
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Engineering the Climate—or Deploying Disaster? Applying Just War Theory to Geoengineering
›As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, known as geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies. However, geoengineering technologies could disrupt the global ecological status quo, and could pose a potentially coercive (and very serious) threat to peace. Is it possible to obtain the potential benefits of these game-changing technologies, while avoiding spurring violence and conflict? In a recent article in Strategic Studies Quarterly, we argue that just war theory—which defines the concepts of “right” and “wrong” in warfare—could provide ethical standards for security decision-makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used to address the climate challenge.
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Climate Engineering: Innovative Solution or Ethical Dilemma?
›“Climate engineering can be a way to build a better world,” said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford University during a recent virtual workshop on the promises and pitfalls of climate engineering held by the Institute on Science for Global Policy, in partnership with the Forum for Climate Geoengineering Assessment at American University, and the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.
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Backdraft #8: Simon Nicholson on Climate Engineering
›When the Paris Agreement set an ambitious goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the negotiators put climate engineering on the table, says Simon Nicholson, professor at American University, in this week’s episode of Backdraft. Once the purview of science fiction, a majority of the models run by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) required large-scale use of climate engineering technologies to keep additional warming below 2 degrees.
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Consensus, Certainty, and Catastrophe: The Debate Over Ocean Iron Fertilization
›Almost three decades ago, at a conference at the Woods Hole Institute, oceanographer John Martin said with “a half a tanker of iron…I will give you the next ice age.”
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Jessica F. Green & Thomas N. Hale, Duck of Minerva
Why IR Needs the Environment and the Environment Needs IR
›April 13, 2017 // By Wilson Center StaffThe state of the global environment is terrible – and deteriorating. The globalization of industrial production and the consumptive habits of 7 billion people have created the Anthropocene, a geologic age in which the actions of humans are the primary determinant of the Earth’s natural systems. This shift creates a profound new form of environmental interdependence, of which climate change is only the most salient example.
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New “Backdraft” Podcast Series, on the Peace and Conflict Consequences of Climate Responses
›The science is clear: To prevent major disruption, the global community must take steps to address climate change. But it is also increasingly clear that efforts to address climate change can have major effects on societies that are not always anticipated.
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Retooling U.S. Foreign Policy to Confront 21st-Century Threats
›At a time when the relative influence of the United States is decreasing, and the relative influence of states is decreasing, we need a retooling of the architecture of U.S. foreign policy. Just as “personnel is policy,” it is also true that “organization is policy.”
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