Geoengineering and the New Geopolitics of the Anthropocene

Geoengineering: The Next Era of Geopolitics?

Geopolitics has evolved from understanding global politics to actively remaking the global context due to the Anthropocene.
A key question is what kind of planet is being created and who decides the future planetary configuration.
The limited success of climate mitigation has shifted focus to geoengineering.
Governing geoengineering before unilateral actions occur is crucial to prevent future conflicts, especially regarding the ideal global temperature.
Climate scientists and security experts recognize increasing unpredictability and uncertainty due to human-induced changes.
The scale of potential consequences demands attention in imagining the geopolitical future.

Geopolitics and Technology

Geopolitics involves understanding how the world is known, imagined, divided, and integrated into the global economy.
American Cold War culture profoundly shaped geopolitics.
Technical practices, such as cartography, satellite surveillance, and data collection, are used to understand, dominate, and rule space.
These practices are linked to aviation, rocketry, and nuclear technology.
The rise of surveillance technologies during the Cold War opened new avenues for geopolitical conflict.
The International Geophysical Year (1957/58) initiated global monitoring of key Earth system parameters, including atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Weather modification as a weapon was discussed during the Cold War, leading to the rise of meteorology as a global science.
China continues to use cloud seeding for weather adjustment.
Orbital space became integral to geopolitical strategy with Sputnik galvanizing American NASA efforts.
The world became the “whole earth,” requiring security as an American policy.
In the 1980s, nuclear war anxieties, discussions of nuclear winter, and ozone depletion highlighted the vulnerability of the Earth to human actions, making the planet a material part of geopolitics.
Climate science is part of the geophysical knowledge base in military matters and techno-geopolitics.
Deliberate attempts to change planetary temperatures through geoengineering have added a new dimension.
Technical discussions on climate engineering and optimal planetary temperatures directly influence political questions about the future being created for humanity.
Geopolitics is now intertwined with geological politics, involving a three-dimensional understanding and appreciation of the Earth’s materiality in global politics.
“Geo-metrics,” such as greenhouse gas levels, are integral to geopolitics.
Economic activities are altering the global atmospheric composition, species mixes, and ocean acidity.
Rising greenhouse gas levels have led to serious discussions about artificial climate configurations through geoengineering.
Political geographers should engage more deeply with this topic, considering how the world is known, divided, and incorporated into the global economy, and how its future configuration is being decided.
Technical change and economic capacity are key aspects of geopolitics, suggesting the need to consider the planet as a limited entity.
Geopolitical ambition must be restrained to prevent nuclear and other catastrophes.
Climate engineering or geoengineering involves artificial attempts to manipulate the Earth’s climate system.
Controversies exist regarding who should decide when and if geoengineering should be tested or deployed.
There is no appropriate international governance regime; neither the United Nations Environment Program nor the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has the structure or agencies to undertake the task.
Extensive technical concerns about geoengineering have been raised under the Convention on Biological Diversity due to the large uncertainties involved.
This mechanism has been used to attempt to ban ocean iron fertilization experiments.

Climate Experiments

In October 2012, media reports of an ocean iron seeding experiment off the West Coast of Canada raised concerns about unauthorized private experiments.
The lack of clarity about jurisdiction, coupled with a privately funded corporate initiative planning to raise money through carbon credits, raised ethical and political questions.
In 2012, a British University project on the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) field experiment was canceled due to confusion over patent applications and lack of transparent oversight.
Questions arose concerning who would own the technology if field experiments were upscaled to inject sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere.
Geoengineering is being actively considered and bankrolled by corporate interests and government science programs.
Growing alarm exists in global policy-making circles about the predicted rate of global climate change.
Attempts to artificially adjust the planet’s climate are receiving serious attention from political and business elites.
A bipartisan plan to research geoengineering options comprehensively has been published in the United States.
Geoengineering technologies should only be deployed as a last resort.
These matters need serious and immediate attention.
A distinction is drawn between Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).
SRM aims to reduce the level of insolation on the Earth's surface.
CDR aims to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
SRM involves intentional attempts to directly change atmospheric conditions using technological means.
CDR merges into climate change mitigation measures, such as afforestation and land use management.
Global failures to maintain a stable climate have led to discussions of SRM as an emergency measure.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) discussed geoengineering in its fifth assessment report.
The IPCC warned that if SRM techniques are terminated, a rapid rise in global temperature is a substantial risk.
A key question is whether geoengineering constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” that the UNFCCC was established to prevent.

Solar Radiation Management

SRM involves deliberate attempts to modify the climate system by directly intervening to adjust the temperature of the global system.
Science fiction scenarios include global parasols or sun-shields and large mirrors in space.
Practical discussions focus on doing things on Earth or in the atmosphere.
The goal of SRM is to keep the global climate system within the Holocene range of temperature.
Atmospheric technologies for SRM include injecting sulfate aerosols into the high atmosphere to mimic volcanoes.
Using a modest fleet of aircraft flying in the stratosphere is a feasible possibility.
This approach is reversible; the aircraft can cease operation if a major volcanic eruption occurs.
Problems include acid precipitation and difficulty calibrating the amount of aerosol needed.
Advocates argue that small-scale experiments are essential to investigate the physical processes involved.
Another suggestion is albedo modification, such as using white paint on new construction to reflect sunlight.
Increasing cloud cover by artificially producing clouds is also being considered, especially in the Arctic.
Artificial cloud making by spraying seawater into the lower atmosphere from ships is a feasible engineering possibility.
The effectiveness of such projects and their unforeseen consequences are unclear.
This uncertainty underlies much of the opposition to geoengineering.
A key criticism of SRM is that it doesn't deal with ocean acidification.

Carbon Dioxide Removal

The alternative to SRM is actively trying to reduce the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
Various technical projects to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have been suggested under the rubric of carbon capture and storage.
Attaching devices to remove carbon dioxide from the stacks of coal-fired electrical power stations would be especially useful.
The cost and engineering matters have yet to be dealt with effectively.
These technologies directly tackle the problem of carbon dioxide emissions at the source.
Ocean seeding or fertilization promotes plankton blooms to absorb carbon dioxide.
When the plankton die, the carbon they have absorbed will fall to the ocean floor.
Ocean seeding should have multiple benefits, but there are numerous unknowns about the ecological effects.
The arguments over the seeding experiment off the West Coast of Canada in 2012 made these controversies clear.
On land, the possibilities of biochar or sequestering carbon in the form of charcoal have been discussed.
Farming practices are complicated matters of food production and rural land use.
Wetlands are an obvious alternative method of extracting carbon from the atmosphere.
Draining wetlands for agricultural land has been the priority over the last century.
Replacing bogs with short rotation forestry might provide a “carbon neutral” fuel source.
Reforestation on a large scale might offer considerable potential for carbon sinks.
Forestry plantations have been part of the carbon offset industry.
Attempts by national governments and major corporations to gain access to land disrupting rural political economies, tying agricultural change once again into matters of geopolitics.
Land use issues are the key to mitigation.
Viewed in these terms, many land use changes might be discussed in terms of geoengineering.
The failure of routine political economy to curtail carbon emissions has triggered the rapidly growing geoengineering discussion.

Political Economy and Climate Change

Reducing emissions is essential to maintaining the climate regime that civilizations have known.
Carbon capture and storage helps indirectly with the acidification of the oceans.
Reducing black carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases are also important.
Once the argument engages discussions of soft geoengineering or CDR, it merges with matters of political economy and development strategies.
The global economy becomes the issue, and CDR becomes part of the larger discussion of sustainability.
Traditional ideas of protecting environments are no longer appropriate; we require human stewardship to move toward a sustainable earth.
Climate change is a production problem, not a traditional “environmental” protection problem.
The assumption of a separate nature out there to be preserved is no longer the appropriate geopolitical framing.
Concerted efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and shape landscapes and cities to better tolerate more extreme events would make a much safer world.
The capitalist order has proved incapable of maintaining human circumstances in Holocene conditions.
Big political questions are now in need of attention.
The power of the fossil fuel industry makes it unlikely that free markets will deliver a more sustainable future.
Climate matters and the globalization of the economy require multilateral institutions and economic innovations.
The assumption that emergency efforts at geoengineering will be tried underscores the urgency of addressing these experiments and the need to put some international governance structure into place.

Governing Geoengineering

The question of how to govern international research efforts on geoengineering and solar radiation management is a pressing issue.
None of the standard environmental governance mechanisms obviously fit well.
The CBD acted to attempt to ban geoengineering experiments that might affect biodiversity.
There has not been any reason to invoke the 1970s agreements against using environmental modification as a weapon of war.
Forestalling such invocations would seem to be prudent politics.
International cooperation is essential because the potential for misunderstandings is huge if transparency isn’t obvious.
The implicit geography is one of a common context, not one amenable to regional or unilateral actions.
Attempts to slow warming in the Arctic may strain relations in the region.
Thinking about how to govern such matters in a way that anticipates possible future difficulties is urgent.
The Oxford principles encapsulate many of the key themes that need attention.
The need for such guidelines lies in the potential geopolitical dangers of unilateral action by a state or corporate enterprise.
The potential for conflict could be very considerable.
Uncoordinated efforts by individual states are likely to be much less effective than coordinated attempts.
Attempts at Arctic cooling by aerosol injection might be counteracted by injections elsewhere.
There is a large technical incentive for states considering geoengineering to cooperate.
Getting agreements on the “rules of the road” for experimenting or deploying such technologies in advance is crucial.
First in the Oxford principles is that geoengineering needs to be regulated as a public good.
Complicated matters of private corporations, patents, and property are unavoidable.
Given the potential for international misunderstanding, transparency is especially important as a confidence-building measure.
Public participation in any decision concerning geoengineering requires some sort of informed consent; this is the essence of the second principle.
All of which is much more difficult for solar radiation management rather than carbon dioxide removal, given that there is no effective “democratic” oversight in international affairs.
Clearly, participation by civil society in these deliberations would help.
The third principle emphasizes the importance of complete transparency of research plans and the publication of scientific results.
Common “rules of the road” would have advantages.
Related to this is the fourth principle that emphasizes independent assessments of impacts.
The fifth principle stipulates that “robust governance structures” must be in place prior to decisions being taken.
The necessity of putting institutions in place prior to deploying geoengineering technologies is clear.
One point that has become clear is that traditional notions of political sovereignty and models of territorial states protecting fixed boundaries aren’t useful modes of thinking about this problem.
In the case of geoengineering, territorial strategies are not the practical modes for considering SRM with all its potential global effects.
The case for CDR is different in that land use changes are mitigation measures that do affect the climate and can be decided locally.
Geoengineering has to be considered as part of the mitigation and adaptation policy discussion, not separate from it.

Geopolitics in the Anthropocene

None of the Oxford principles can effectively grapple with the larger ethical questions concerning geoengineering.
There is no right answer as to how hot the planet should get.
Keeping options open for future generations is a key ethical point.
There is now no given nature that can literally ground ethical concerns.
Many object to further technological interventions into natural systems to supposedly fix the problems caused by prior uses of large-scale engineering.
Promethean formulations just suggest an extension of artificial efforts to shape the terrestrial environment to maintain the existing global economy.
The “Soterian” alternative of making much less ecologically disruptive modes of living widespread makes more sense.
It simply may not be possible to do this in the present global political economy in time to prevent dramatic climate disruptions.
The proliferation of marketplace economies that are the key to the processes of globalization now constitutes the ecological transformation that is the Anthropocene.
Understanding them as such suggests that rapid reform of the global political economy is essential.
The arguments for SRM will probably gain force among political elites.
New institutions and practices are starting to emerge to try to bridge what Victor Galaz calls the “Anthropocene Gap”.
There is also a growing social protest movement on climate matters.
Climate geopolitics still matters in terms of states and the UNFCCC arrangements.
The routine mundane operations of the fossil-fueled economy are now changing geopolitics in ways that make traditional notions of territorial sovereignty even more dubious.
Understanding geopolitics in terms of geological transformation caused by human action is the key to contextualizing geoengineering appropriately and clarifying the policy options for both Prometheans and Soterians.
Investigating the contextual premises in this discussion and their political implications is now a new scholarly task for all political geographers.