Climate change negotiations and geoengineering: Is this really the best we can do?

Environmental Quality Management

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 1-16

  Allenby, Brad ^a  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLIMATE CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR; ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT; ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE; ENVIRONMENTAL MODELING; ENVIRONMENTAL RISK;

EID: 78650103633     PISSN: 10881913     EISSN: 15206483     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/tqem.20276     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. See McFedries, P. (2010). Hacking the planet. IEEE Spectrum, 47(8), 23
2. Howe, A. S., & Sherwood, B. (Eds.). (2009). Out of this world: The new field of space architecture. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.
3. Allenby, B. (2007). Earth systems engineering and management: A manifesto. Environmental Science & Technology, 41, 7960-7965
4. Allenby, B. (2005). Reconstructing earth: Technology and environment in the age of humans. Washington, DC: Island Press
5. Fogg, M. J. (1995). Terraforming: Engineering planetary environments. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers.
6. See The Royal Society. (2009). Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance, and uncertainty, at ix. London: The Royal Society.
7. The Royal Society's report, ibid., provides an excellent overview of this technology taxonomy.
8. To the best of my knowledge, the first time this phrase was used was in my column: Allenby, B. (2008, January). The dan- with. gerous rise of carbon fundamentalism. Green Business Letter. This section draws on that column.
9. Johnsson-Latham, G. (2007). Gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development. Report to the Environmental Advisory Council of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
10. Ravilious, K. (2009). How green is your pet? New Scientist, 204(2731), 46-47
11. Roberts, I. (2007). Say no to global guzzling: There is a clear link between the obesity epidemic sweeping the world and the rise of global warming. New Scientist, 194(2610), 21
12. Children: Bad for the environment? (2007, December 28). The Week, p. 21
13. Ritter, K. (2007, December 23). Dissenters demonized in climate debate. Arizona Republic, p. A25.
14. Goodman, E. (2007, February 9). No change in political climate. Boston Globe. Available online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/.
15. See, e.g., The controversies in climate science: Science behind closed doors. (2010, July 8). The Economist, pp. 76-77. Available online at http://www.economist.com/ node/16537628.
16. Rose, D. (2010, January 24). Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified. Daily Mail. Available online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientistssays- knew-data-verified.html.
17. See, e.g., Cappiello, D. (2009, October 22). Poll: Americans' belief in global warming cools. Associated Press. Available online at http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climatechange/ stories/poll-americans-belief-in-global-warming-cools.
18. I once worked for a firm in which the periodic employee surveys indicated deep distrust and lack of confidence in upper management. For a long time, our response was that if only employees understood what we were doing, they would see the light. So we continued to try to "educate" them. Finally, it was suggested that the problem might not lie with the employees but with upper management. Ridiculous as this possibility was, when we took this approach and changed our behaviors, the survey numbers changed fairly dramatically. The lesson for the climate change community is that the public may not be as dumb as they think.
19. One response to this development is earth systems engineering and management. See, e.g., Allenby, B. (2007). Earth systems engineering and management: A manifesto. Environmental Science & Technology, 41, 7960-7965
20. Allenby, B. (2005). Reconstructing earth: Technology and environment in the age of humans. Washington, DC: Island Press. Another is the beginning of interest in sustainable engineering
21. See, e.g., Allenby, B. R. (in press). The theory and practice of sustainable engineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
22. Graedel, T. E., & Allenby, B. R. (2009). Industrial ecology and sustainable engineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
23. It is not that the details of the climate change negotiation process aren't complicated; they certainly are. But the discourse itself began with the oversimplistic and reductionist framing of global climate change as an environmental concern that necessarily trumped all other interests-an initial mistake that has since only gotten more institutionalized, and hence more problematic.
24. See, e.g., Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (1997). The social construction of technological systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
25. Much of this discussion is drawn from: Rosenberg, N., & Birdzell, L. E., Jr. (1986). How the west grew rich: The economic transformation of the industrial world. New York: Basic Books; Schivelbusch, W. (1977). The railway journey: The industrialization of time and space in the 19th century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
26. Allenby, B. (2009). The industrial ecology of emerging technologies: Complexity and the reconstruction of the world. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13, 168-183.
27. See, e.g., Freeman, C., & Louca, F. (2001). As time goes by: From the industrial revolutions to the information revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
28. See Cronon, W. (1992). Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the great west. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
29. Tollefson, J. (2010). Intensive farming may ease climate change. Nature, 465(7300), 853.
30. See, e.g., Rogers, L. (2009, November 29). Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory. Sunday Times (UK). Available online at www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece.
31. Holmes, B. (2010). What's the beef with meat? New Scientist, 207(2769), 28-31. Note that this article presents figures from the perspective of going vegan rather than growing meat in factories. To a rough approximation, however, the two paths provide equivalent benefits, especially given the uncertainties in the figures to begin with.