Abstract
Secondary analysis of transcripts of public dialogues on climate engineering indicates that justice concerns are an important but as yet under-recognised dimension influencing public reactions to these emerging techniques. This paper describes and explores justice issues raised by participants in a series of deliberative public engagement meetings. Such justice issues included the distribution of costs and benefits across space and time; the relative power and influence of beneficiaries and others; and the weakness of procedural justice measures that might protect public interests in decision making about climate engineering. We argue that publics are mobilising diverse concepts of justice, echoing both philosophical and practical sources. We conclude that a better understanding of conceptions of justice in this context could assist exploration and understanding of public perceptions of and attitudes towards climate engineering and the different technologies involved. Such detailed public engagement would appear essential if sound, well-informed and morally justifiable decisions are to be made regarding research or development of climate engineering.
Highlights
Questions of justice are central to climate change, and issues of ethics have been repeatedly raised in considerations of climate engineering as a policy response (Gardiner, 2010; Preston, 2012; Burns 2013)
This paper aims to start to fill this lacuna – the lack of systematic exploration of the dimensions of justice related to climate engineering, as articulated or intimated by various publics – through a secondary analysis of a series of public deliberative events held in the UK
Carbon dioxide removal forms of climate engineering are already prevalent in scientific and political scenarios for limiting climate change to below a 2 C global rise in temperature, and the aspirational goal agreed in Paris to work towards no more than 1.5 C seems likely to trigger renewed advocacy for consideration of solar radiation management
Summary
Questions of justice are central to climate change, and issues of ethics have been repeatedly raised in considerations of climate engineering as a policy response (Gardiner, 2010; Preston, 2012; Burns 2013). Questions of ethics and justice with respect to publics remain as yet relatively unexplored, despite increasing interest in climate engineering following the Paris climate accord in 2015 This paper aims to establish whether justice implications are a significant factor in public reactions to climate engineering and to consider which conceptions of justice public expressions of concerns regarding climate engineering might reflect.
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