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  • Whose climate - AAM May18

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Energy Research & Social Science. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Energy Research & Social Science, 44, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2018.05.021

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    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Whose climate and whose ethics?: Conceptions of justice in solar geoengineering modelling

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>10/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Energy Research and Social Science
Volume44
Number of pages13
Pages (from-to)209-221
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date24/05/18
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The role of underlying assumptions about justice in the construction of climate geoengineering knowledge is explored, based on a review of climate modelling studies focused on stratospheric aerosol injection. Such emerging technologies would create distinctively new climates, closer to the present climate than those resulting from unabated emissions; but with different winners and losers, in part as a result of implications for energy systems. Embedded presuppositions about the nature and practice of modelling are exposed, as are unexplored and narrow utilitarian and distributional conceptions of justice. The implications of these underlying assumptions and values for the discourses of climate geoengineering are considered. It is argued that they obscure the identification and consideration of a range of potential injustices arising in the pursuit of climate geoengineering; and create and reproduce asymmetries in power regarding the discourses and evaluations of climate geoengineering prospects. In particular, optimistic climate geoengineering discourses risk sustaining elite interests in high-carbon energy economies. Some suggestions are offered to improve the design, deployment and interpretation of climate engineering models in trans-disciplinary research so as to mitigate these problems.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Energy Research & Social Science. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Energy Research & Social Science, 44, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2018.05.021