Contesting the climate
- PDF / 481,522 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 439.642 x 666.49 pts Page_size
- 84 Downloads / 208 Views
Contesting the climate Security implications of geoengineering Muhammet A. Bas1 · Aseem Mahajan2 Received: 21 July 2019 / Accepted: 22 May 2020 / © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Scientists predict higher global temperatures over this century. While this may benefit some countries, most will face varying degrees of damage. This has motivated research on solar geoengineering, a technology that allows countries to unilaterally and temporarily lower global temperatures. To better understand the security implications of this technology, we develop a simple theory that incorporates solar geoengineering, countergeoengineering to reverse its effects, and the use of military force to prevent others from modifying temperatures. We find that when countries’ temperature preferences diverge, applications of geoengineering and countergeoengineering can be highly wasteful due to deployment in opposite directions. Under certain conditions, countries may prefer military interventions over peaceful ones. Cooperation that avoids costs or waste of resources can emerge in repeated settings, but difficulties in monitoring or attributing interventions make such arrangements less attractive. Keywords Geoengineering · Countergeoengineering · Conflict · Climate change
1 Introduction A 2014 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that unabated human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increase global mean surface temperatures between 1.4 ◦ C and 4.8 ◦ C over the course of the century. These temperature Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02758-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Aseem Mahajan
[email protected] Muhammet A. Bas [email protected] 1
Associate Professor of Political Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2
Dept. of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Climatic Change
changes, and their impacts are distributed unevenly, as some countries will face more damages than others. In some cases, the temperature effects of climate change may even produce short-term regional benefits in the form of greater economic productivity, better weather, and higher crop yields (Burke et al. 2015b; Egan and Mullin 2016). Changing temperatures may also confer geopolitical benefits. As the Arctic melts, proximate countries recognize that this could provide greater access to fishing grounds, oil and natural gas reserves, and the strategically important Northwest Passage commercial shipping route (Gautier et al. 2009; Yumashev et al. 2017). How do countries’ divergent temperature preferences affect their climate and security policies? The advent of geoengineering—defined as the “deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change” (Shepherd 2009)—has expanded the necessary scope of climate governance beyond GHG mitigation, raising new questions. Recent work in political science and economics focuses on
Data Loading...
