Unilateral Action?

Cairncross said that climate engineering was still largely science fiction, but then went on to say that because the U.S. is well known for its ability to come up with technical fixes for problems, that within 5-10 years, the U.S. might attempt to deal with the problem of climate change unilaterally using geoengineering, even if other countries objected and even if the actions taken by the U.S. resulted in harm to the other countries. So Cairncross seems to be moving from ridicule to fear as to the possibility of using geoengineering to stop climate change and believes others are also. In June, I told the NY Times that in general, scientists either ridicule or fear geoengineering (3).

This question came up before on the blog www.realclimate.org (4) and it bears revisiting. I said then and also during the interview that it is unlikely that any nation will take unilateral action, but that if things get tough enough (droughts, famines, heat waves, sea level rise, etc.) nations will always look out for their own self interest first, irrespective of treaties like UN 1978 (5) or some other as yet unwritten, moratoriums as proposed by NAS president Cicerone (6), threats from other countries or even common sense (the strategy won’t solve the problem, but the leaders feel they have to take some action, any action).

So the possibility of unilateral action exists. But what is the probability? I said that due to the scale required for these strategies, most could not be implemented without international cooperation. For example, the plastic cover project would have to use land in other countries, since the U.S. has very little desert that would be suitable.

Similarly, running commercial jet engines with a rich fuel to air ratio to generate soot or with high sulfur fuel to generate sulfuric acid aerosol would necessarily involve the cooperation not just of the airlines, most of which are privately owned and operated, but also of the countries over which they fly. A dedicated fleet operated by a government and restricting itself to the country’s airspace could, however, get around these limitations.

Strategies like burning sulfur in power plants located on islands in the ocean, releasing sulfur dioxide gas from tanks aboard dedicated aircraft or launching 16-inch naval rifle shells filled with aluminum oxide nanoparticles could also be carried out by a single nation, but like the jet fuel strategy could not be done undetected by the rest of the world.

To date, however, the U.S. government has devoted little time and allocated few resources to exploring geoengineering, let alone embarked on a crash program to unilaterally stop global warming.

The Bush Administration Climate Change Technology Program’s (CCTP) most recent Strategic Plan (7) even attempted to separate geoengineering ideas from those that should be considered part of the funded research portfolio. The CCTP is responsible for coordinating climate change technology research conducted by the U.S. government, although some members of Congress think it should take a more active role than just issuing reports sporadically.

On page 11 “They [the CCTP Strategic Goals] are not intended to encompass the broad array of technical challenges and opportunities that may arise from climate change. These may include such research areas as… geoengineering to reduce radiative forcing through modification of the Earth’s surface albedo or stratospheric sunlight scattering…Such topics are important, but they are beyond the scope of this plan.”