The feckless response of the world community to the mounting threat of climate change has led to a growing interest in climate geoengineering research. In early 2015, the us National Academy of Sciences released two major reports on the topic. While it is notable that both reports recommended some form of public participation to inform research, this article argues that the vagueness of these recommendations could mean that their implementation might not comport with optimal approaches for public deliberation. We outline some options for public deliberation on climate geoengineering and important design considerations.
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The Economist, ‘Stopping a Scorcher’, The Economist, 23 November 2013; Amy Schaefer, ‘Controversial Plan of "Geoengineering" to Stop Global Warming Could be in the Works’, Inquisitor, 10 February 2015.
International Energy Agency, supra note 11, at 12.
Climate Action Tracker, supra note 11.
John A. Church et al., ‘Sea Level Change’, in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the ipcc (2013) (likely rise in sea level by 2100 between a quarter and more than three-quarters of a foot). However, a number of more recent reports project potentially far greater rises; see A. Dutton et al., ‘Sea-Level Rise Due to Polar Ice-Sheet Mass Loss During Past Warm Periods’, 349 Science 4019-1-19 (2015) (sea level could ultimately rise six meters even if temperatures only rise 2°C above pre-industrial levels); J. Hansen et al., ‘Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2°C Global Warming is Highly Dangerous’, 15 Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 20059–20179 (2015) (sea levels could rise more than three meters in the next 50 years), <www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html>.
Royal Society, supra note 4, at 2.
Russell, supra note 39, at 361.
J. Dryzek, ‘Ecology and Discursive Democracy’, in Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, edited by M. O’Connor (Guilford Press, 1994) at 176; Anderson, supra note 81, at 121.
Anderson, supra note 90, at 122.
Bohman, supra note 84, at 27; Sarewitz, supra note 96, at 414.
Joshua Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy, edited by Derek Matravers and Jon Pike (Routledge, 2003), at 203; Javier Lezaun and Linda Soneryd, ‘Consulting Citizens: Technologies of Elicitation and the Mobility of Publics’, 16 Public Understanding of Science 379, 379 (2007); Patrick Sturgis, ‘On the Limits of Public Engagement for the Governance of Emerging Technologies’, 23(1) Public Understanding of Science 38, 39 (2014).
John Dewey, ‘The Economic Basis of a New Society’, in John Dewey: The Later Works, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988) at 320.
Sebastián Ureta, ‘A Failed Platform: The Citizen Consensus Conference Travels to Chile’, Public Understanding of Science 1, 1 (2015).
Bellamy et al., supra note 94, at 597–615; Natural Environment Research Council, Experiment Earth: Report on a Public Dialogue on Geoengineering (2010); Nick Pidgeon et al., ‘Deliberating Stratospheric Aerosols for Climate Geoengineering and the spice Project’, 3 Nature Climate Change (2013) 451–457; Adam Corner et al. ‘Messing with Nature? Exploring Public Perceptions of Geoengineering in the uk,’ 23 Global Environmental Change (2013) 938–947.
Seyla Benhabib, ‘Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy,’ in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, edited by Seyla Benhabib (Princeton University Press, 1996) at 87.
Andersen and Birgit Jæger, supra note 77, at 331.
Cobb, supra note 113, at 1536; Dryzek and Tucker, supra note 66, at 865.
Andersen and Jæger, supra note 77, at 335. Some consensus conference formats provide for a ‘split statement’ if consensus cannot be reached after participants seek to understand the arguments of other participants as much possible. Jon Fixdal, ‘Consensus Conferences as "Extended Peer Review"’, 24(6) Science and Public Policy 366, 370 (1997).
Ibid. at 325; Dryzeck and Tucker, supra note 66, at 867.
Dryzeck and Tucker, supra note 66, at 857.
Karpowitz and Raphael, supra note 116, at 57.
J. Burgess and J. Clark, ‘Evaluating Public and Stakeholder Engagement Strategies in Environmental Governance’, in Interfaces between Science and Society, edited by A. G. Perez, S. G. Vaz, and S. Tognetti (Greenleaf Publishing, 2006), at 222–52.
Burgess et al., supra note 86, at 302.
Stirling and Davies, supra note 143, at 3.
Stirling and Mayer, supra note 141, at 532.
Burgess et al., supra note 86, at 302.
Stirling and Davies, supra note 143, at 2; Andy Stirling and Gale Davies, ‘Deliberative Mapping in Practice: The "Kidney Gap"’, Briefing 3, Science and Technology Policy Research (2004), at 2.
Rob Bellamy, ‘A Sociotechnical Framework for Governing Climate Engineering’, Public Understanding of Science 1, 10–13 (2015).
P. E. Converse, ‘Attitudes and Non-Attitudes: Continuation of a Dialogue’, in The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems, edited by E. R. Tufte (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1970) at 15.
Pidgeon et al., supra note 91, at 4177 (2012); Bellamy et al., supra note 94, at 598.
Pidgeon et al., supra note 92, at 451; A. Stirling, supra note 1, at 286.
Jack Stilgoe, Experiment Earth: Responsible Innovation in Geoengineering, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), at 36.
Sturgis, supra note 100, at 3; Lisa Dilling and Rachel Hauser, ‘Governing Geoengineering Research: Why, When, and How?’, 121(3) Climatic Change 553, 553 (2013). Indeed, a failure to engender public acceptance of climate geoengineering could prove fatal. As Zürn and Schäfer observe, ‘In the absence of this acceptance, negative social and political reactions are likely to preempt the development of a possibly important technological option to counteract climate change’; Michael Zürn and Stefan Schäfer, ‘The Paradox of Climate Engineering’, 4(3) Global Policy 1, 7 (2013), <www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u13/the_paradox_of_climate_engineering_global_policy.pdf>.
Stilgoe, supra note 174, at 3.
See Wynne, supra note 94, at 105.
Stilgoe, supra note 174, at 38.
M. Hourdequin, ‘Geoengineering, Solidarity, and Moral Risk’, in Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management, edited by C. Preston (Lexington Books, 2012) at 27.
Stirling, supra note 1, at 293.
Corner and Pidgeon, supra note 170, at 33.
Chilvers, supra note 85, at 287; Margherita Pieraccini, ‘Rethinking Participation in Environmental Decision-Making: Epistemologies of Marine Conservation in South-East England’, 27 Journal of Environmental Law 45, 64 (2015) (allegations by fishing industry that it was engaged downstream in the regulatory process of establishing protected marine areas).
Daniel Barben et al., ‘Anticipatory Governance of Nanotechnology: Foresight, Engagement, and Integration’, in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by E. J. Hackett (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008), at 979; David H. Guston, ‘Understanding ‘Anticipatory Governance’, 44(2) Social Studies of Science 218, 226 (2014).
Martin Carcasson and Leah Sprain, ‘Key Aspects of the Deliberative Democracy Movement’, Public Sector Digest (July 2010), at 3 <http://lwvncsd.org/files/carcasson.sprain._key_aspects_of_ddm.pdf>; Jenny Steele, ‘Participation and Deliberation in Environmental Law: Exploring a Problem-solving Approach’, 21(3) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 415, 435 (2001).
Anderson, supra note 90, at 11.
Sturgis, supra note 100, at 40.
Carcasson and Sprain, supra note 190, at 3; Ian Shapiro, ‘Optimal Deliberation’, in Debating Deliberative Democracy, edited by James S. Fishkin and Peter Laslett (Blackwell Publishing, 2008) at 121.
Young, supra note 199, at 53.
Parkins and Mitchell, supra note 87, at 534.
Kadlec and Friedman, supra note 104, at 12; Williamson and Fung, supra note 111, at 4.
Young, supra note 199, at 57.
Kadlec and Friedman, supra note 104, at 7; Jack Stilgoe, Simon J. Lock and James Wilsdon, ‘Why Should We Promote Public Engagement with Science?’, 23(1) Public Understanding of Science 4, 6 (2014).
Mercer et al., supra note 67, at 6. See also Phil Macnaghten and Jason Chilvers, ‘Governing Risky Technologies’, in Critical Risk Research: Practices, Politics and Ethics, edited by S. Lane, F. Klauser, and M. Kearnes (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) at 110.
Kadlec and Friedman, supra note 104, at 8.
Davies and Selin, supra note 169, at 120.
Kadlec and Friedman, supra note 104, at 18; Mark B. Brown, ‘Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation’, 14(2) Journal of Political Philosophy 203, 208 (2006).
Stirling, supra note 124, at 269.
Knapp et al., supra note 140, at 54.
Macnaghten and Chilvers, supra note 213, at 116–17; Dryzek and Tucker, supra note 66, at 867 and 869; Corner and Pidgeon, supra note 170, at 35; Goodin and Dryzek, supra note 193, at 227.
Williamson and Fung, supra note 203, at 5.
Sarewitz, supra note 96.
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The feckless response of the world community to the mounting threat of climate change has led to a growing interest in climate geoengineering research. In early 2015, the us National Academy of Sciences released two major reports on the topic. While it is notable that both reports recommended some form of public participation to inform research, this article argues that the vagueness of these recommendations could mean that their implementation might not comport with optimal approaches for public deliberation. We outline some options for public deliberation on climate geoengineering and important design considerations.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1244 | 218 | 34 |
Full Text Views | 224 | 8 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 101 | 5 | 0 |