Blog of law articles

(BY HUGO)

Since this post, the signals in favour of geoengineering have become stronger - see an article here from John Vidal and another here from Pat Mooney in The Guardian, with a link to the UN preliminary drafts.

The Doctors Strangelove have decided that although we cannot predict what will happen with climate under current conditions, we are able to predict what will happen if we throw a few more variables into the climatic system. It also appears imperative to avoid any international legislation on the issue because that would not be desirable: See Keynote III.1 by Professor Redgewell in the UN preliminary drafts mentioned above.

It's difficult to imagine that efforts aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions will increase when we go down the road of climate engineering. Quite worrying is the fact that the impetus towards geoengineering comes not from the traditional right wing politicians but from the IPCC. Clive Hamilton might have a point with his book Requiem for a species as it looks more and more like human intelligence could become an evolutionary dead end: we blatantly disregard the only solution we know works - curbing emissions. Precaution is completely dismissed.

Will the countries with the will and the means to perform such operations, such as the US and the UK, make sure that any potential benefits as well as any adverse impacts are most equitably shared around the globe? Even more unlikely, will the private sector patenting geo-engineering technology act selflessly in the best interest of all? John Vidal in The Observer reports here on fears that manipulating weather patterns could have a calamitous effect on poorer countries...