HOME Campaign Statement on the SCoPEx Advisory Committee and its legitimation of Solar Geoengineering
Blocking the sun on a vast scale to cool the planet: that’s the idea being pushed by a small group of geoengineers. Solar geoengineering is a dangerous set of proposals that could have disastrous effects, particularly in the Global South. And geoengineering will do nothing to address the structural causes of climate change; that’s why it has the enthusiastic backing of the fossil fuel industry.
Extreme caution should be taken with regard to these kinds of experiments. The full effects of a deployment of solar geoengineering are uncertain. For example, abruptly halting the full-scale deployment of solar geoengineering could cause a sudden increase in global temperatures – known as “termination shock”. Unintended, devastating impacts on plant, animal and human life worldwide are also possible.
The “small” open-air experiments cannot be uncoupled from the advancement of the full-scale technology. The experiments that are proposed today will tell us little about the technology’s effects on the climate. They will, however, make large-scale implementation more likely.
Solar geoengineering technologies pose uncertainties, and carry high environmental and social risks. Like Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies, they would entrench problematic techno-solutions and policy ideas for the climate crisis. Meanwhile, corporations such as oil, coal, gas and agri-business would be less likely to be held accountable for their role in creating the crises we find ourselves in. They could benefit from the development and deployment of these new technologies.
Because of its many potential impacts, solar geoengineering is subject to a de-facto moratorium backed by 196 countries – the parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). The US is not a party to the CBD.
The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), a project for testing equipment for solar geoengineering based at Harvard University, is attempting to circumvent this call for precaution. By creating an “Advisory Committee” that would engage with the public and provide “advice,” they are attempting to avoid a real discussion on the dangers and governance of solar geoengineering.
The Committee’smission is ”to ensure that the SCoPEx project is undertaken in a transparent, responsible, and legitimate manner.” The committee, by definition, cannot do this. It has no qualifications and no jurisdiction to do so. All of the members of the advisory committee are based in the United States, and most of them are academics. They were selected by a panel of three scientists known to be supportive of geoengineering research.
Previously,40 organizations sent a letter to each member of the SCoPEx Advisory Committee, appealing to them to stop providing legitimacy to a project that flies in the face of the will of the majority of the world. The letter reads, in part:
Decisions about geoengineering require global, democratic, transparent governance, and while we understand the Advisory Committee’s aim is to contribute to a consideration of some of the global dimensions of this project, it should be clear that an appointed body cannot replace global, democratic and transparent governance of a geoengineering project that has far-reaching implications.
The Committee never responded to this letter, and instead, they are now calling for comments on the project to be sent to them in a process that totally lacks transparency – incredibly, only the committee will see the comments! We consider this a mockery of participation, and a clear step towards legitimating the project. We therefore refuse to participate in this charade.
This technology, if developed and implemented, has the potential to negatively affect billions of people. Researchers say that solar geoengineering could have the following effects (among many others):
The effects of developing solar geoengineering technology, in other words, are global. They are part of an attempt to unilaterally open a pathway to solar geoengineering, which is a threat to humanity.
We call instead for a halt to SCoPEx and all other geoengineering open air experiments. A global bottom-up debate with broad grassroots and Global South participation should be the starting point of any discussion of its governance. This debate should address not only the negative effects of geoengineering, but open the question of whether it is something that should be explored at all.
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Signatories to the statement: