John Shepherd, New Scientist 3 Sep 09;
MOST people and nations now recognise the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change. However, there is a growing fear that this fragile support for action could be at risk because geoengineering - the large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change - is now receiving serious attention from scientists, policy-makers and the media.
This is sometimes referred to as the "moral hazard" argument. It holds that even discussing geoengineering methods, such as fertilising the oceans with iron or seeding clouds with sea water, may lead to a drop in support for emissions reductions because of a premature conviction that geoengineering could provide an easier way out.
If the mere mention of geoengineering were to have such an effect on public opinion, it would be a serious matter. Social and political inertia are already an impediment to tackling climate change, and it is not hard to imagine that people may prefer to put their faith in untried technologies rather than change their high-carbon lifestyles.
What is more, for reasons of vested interest or ideology, a number of people and organisations oppose action on climate change, and there is a sophisticated and well-funded (mis)information and lobbying industry that seeks to promote such views. Some of these organisations are now showing great interest in geoengineering, and may try to promote it as an alternative to emissions reductions. It is not, as this week's Royal Society report clearly shows (see "Top science body calls for geoengineering 'plan B'").
While we need to take seriously the possibility that geoengineering will undermine efforts to reduce emissions, it is based on an assumption which has not yet been tested empirically. Indeed, it is possible that geoengineering could have the opposite effect. The politics of climate change are notoriously complex and it is difficult to predict people's behaviours and attitudes.
As part of the Royal Society study, we commissioned a preliminary investigation into the moral hazard issue. We convened four focus groups, each bringing together people with similar attitudes to green issues. These ranged from "positive greens", who believe we are reaching the planet's natural limits and that an ecological crisis is pressing, through two moderate groups we called "concerned consumers" and "cautious participants", to the "honestly disengaged", people who are dubious about the claimed threat from climate change and are unlikely to see a link to their own behaviour. The majority of participants were not already familiar with the concept of geoengineering.
As we expected, individuals expressed a wide range of attitudes towards climate change, but some were recurrent. For example, all of the groups expressed concern about the perceived gap between the scale of the problem and the ability of individuals to address it.
Encouragingly, our study suggests that introducing the idea of geoengineering into the discussion could help close this perceived gap and spur some people to take greater action to reduce their carbon footprint.
This appears to be because geoengineering puts the reality of climate change into perspective. Feedback during the focus groups suggested that the very notion that something as drastic as geoengineering may be required dramatically underlines the seriousness of the problem. As one member of the council of the Royal Society remarked later, if we really need to consider actions like these, we must be in serious trouble.
This response was particularly noticeable for the two groups occupying the middle ground: the concerned consumers, who hold pro-environmental beliefs but doubt that a crisis is imminent, and the cautious participants, who tend to agree there is a pressing crisis but are pessimistic about our ability to do anything about it. Even the honestly disengaged group ended up advocating greater incentives for behavioural change so as to avoid finding ourselves in the situation where we need to deploy geoengineering technologies without fully understanding them or their risks.
While these findings are encouraging, we must be cautious not to overemphasise them. Only further research within the UK and internationally will tell us how typical they are. Our focus groups were small and we must also remember that there is always a gap between what people say and what they actually do.
However, the results do suggest that the moral hazard issue may be less of a problem than is sometimes claimed. Indeed, we even have a tentative indication that mentioning geoengineering may galvanise some people into taking greater action on climate change.
There are many questions hanging over geoengineering, and it is clear that the safest and most predictable means of addressing climate change remains action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Geoengineering is not a cure-all for our problems, and its consequences - both known and unknown, intended and unintended - would be felt across the world. But it could be useful in the future to augment more conventional efforts.
At least it looks as though discussing the issue won't be counterproductive, but we need to ensure that the debate is based on facts rather than preconceptions and prejudices. So let's get on with research on the technology and its consequences, and with developing some governance and policy frameworks to control it. And let's do it right now, as a high priority.
Related article
Top science body calls for geoengineering 'plan B' Catherine Brahic, New Scientist 1 Sep 09;
