Adding, contra her assertion, international treaties do not prohibit weather modification. The ENMOD treaty does prohibit hostile use of environmental modification (which includes both weather and climate modification) which has widespread, long lasting, or severe effects which cross international borders. This only applies when both the source state and the harmed state are parties to the treaty (which most of the industrialized world is). It does not apply when the effects are within the source state, are in a non-participating state, or in areas beyond national jurisdiction (e.g. the high seas, Antarctica). It explicitly protects and even encourages peaceful environmental modification. Some text from my article is below.
Although the definition of “environmental modification techniques” includes many forms of climate engineering,[1] ENMOD prohibits only “engag[ing] in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.”[2] ENMOD does not prohibit the research and development of potentially hostile environmental modification techniques, and it explicitly states that it “shall not hinder the use of environmental modification techniques for peaceful purposes.”[3] Moreover, ENMOD recognizes and encourages peaceful environmental modification: “[Parties] [r]ealiz[e] that the use of environmental modification techniques for peaceful purposes could improve the interrelationship of man and nature and contribute to the preservation and improvement of the environment for the benefit of present and future generations . . . .”[4] Parties are to exchange scientific information regarding peaceful environmental modification, and those with the financial means “shall contribute . . . to international economic and scientific co-operation in the preservation, improvement and peaceful utilization of the environment . . . .”[5] If “the preservation, improvement and peaceful utilization of the environment” were to include reducing climate change risks, the passage could even be interpreted as an obligation for industrialized Parties to “contribute” to climate engineering research. http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/3 ----------------------------------------- Jesse L. Reynolds European and International Public Law Tilburg Sustainability Center Tilburg University, The Netherlands Book review editor, Law, Innovation, and Technology email: j.l.reyno...@uvt.nl<mailto:j.l.reyno...@uvt.nl> http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/<http://bit.ly/1pa26dY> http://twitter.com/geoengpolicy<http://bit.ly/1oQBIpR> From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: 19 September 2014 01:22 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Democracy now, Naomi Klein interview (CE extract) Poster's note : irksome interview which falls into lazy intellectual traps (solar power vs geoengineering, monsoon disruption risk). Maybe a lesson for scientists, in that "idealised experiments" clearly have the potential to enter folklore as policy-relevant ideas, even among leading environmental thinkers. http://m.democracynow.org/web_exclusives/2256 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You also talk about others who have other ideas of how to deal with the problem—geoengineering— NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —and one conference that you attended during your research on geoengineering. Could you talk about that? NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, well, look, the point is, is that we have been emitting now for so long. We have been going in the wrong direction now for so long that, as Michael Mann says, the Penn State climate scientist who wrote The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, there’s a procrastination penalty. So, we’re now in a situation where, you know, if we had started in 1990 or 1992, we maybe could have done this gradually. But now, we have to do it so radically that it requires things like what we’ve been talking about—contracting, deliberately contracting parts of our economies, these huge investments in the public sphere. And this is so unthinkable to our economic elites that we are now increasingly hearing, "Well, it’s inevitable, and because it’s inevitable, we need to start thinking about these technofixes, like geoengineering." So, I mean, to me, it’s very telling that it is more thinkable to turn down the sun than it is to think about changing capitalism. And— AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, "turn down the sun"? NAOMI KLEIN: Well, so, one of the geoengineering methods that gets taken most seriously is called "solar radiation management." Solar radiation management, managing the sun. So, what you—so the idea is that you would spray sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere, then they would reflect some of the sun’s rays back to space and dim the sun and cool the Earth. So, climate change is caused by pollution in the lower atmosphere, and so they’re saying that the solution to that pollution is pollution in the stratosphere. And, you know, it’s really frightening when you look at some of the modeling that is being done about what the possible downsides of this could be. And this is sometimes called the Pinatubo Option, because it would simulate the effects of a very powerful volcano. And we know that after these eruptions, these very powerful volcanoes, that send sulfur into the stratosphere, we do see cooler winters. And Mount Pinatubo is an example of that. But we also see interference with rainfall, interference with monsoons in Africa, in Asia. So we’re talking about potentially playing with the water source, which in turn plays with the food source, for billions of people. And there’s no way to test it. So, some models show this is very dangerous. Other models show that it can be managed. But the point is, you can’t test something like this without deploying it. You know, you can test how—you could talk about nozzle test: You can make sure you can actually spray it. But the point is, we would not know how this would interact with an incredibly complex climate system until it was actually deployed. So you’d have to essentially use all of the world’s population as guinea pigs. And I think what’s—you know, this is why I say this changes everything. There are no nonradical options left. And this is why I think climate change is particularly hard for centrist serious liberals to wrap their minds around, because they’re always looking for those nonradical solutions, you know, splitting the difference and something that will seem reasonable and politically sellable. The problem is, we’ve got climate change which will radically change our physical world, or geoengineering, which is, you know, a deliberate attempt to radically change our physical world with absolutely unknown consequences and untestable consequences. Or we, rather than try to change the laws of nature, try to change what we actually can, which is the laws of economics. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have the Heartland Institute describing geoengineering as, quote, "much less expensive than seeking to stem temperature rise solely through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions"; Cato Institute arguing "geo-engineering is more cost-effective than emissions controls altogether"; Hudson Institute saying that geoengineering, quote, "could obviate the majority of the need for carbon cuts and enable us to avoid lifestyle changes." The very point you’re making. NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, so, I mean, some of the scientists who are at the heart of this research—you know, people like David Keith or Ken Caldeira—they would say, "We absolutely do not see this as an alternative to emission reduction. We see this as potentially a stopgap measure." And you can understand why many climate scientists, who have been sounding the alarm now for decades, saying, you know, "We are in huge trouble. We need to cut emissions," seeing no action—in fact, seeing us going in the wrong direction—would be desperate enough to start trying to propose these technofixes. AMY GOODMAN: What’s wrong with seating the clouds over drought areas? NAOMI KLEIN: Look, all of this is a huge gamble. But what you’re talking about is—you know, you’re talking about a regional response. And actually, that’s not entirely new. There have been these attempts to do regional weather modification. Actually, it’s banned in international treaties, because it was the first—the sort of first wave of discussion around this was not about responding to drought, it was using climate engineering as a weapon of war. And this was actually attempted during the Vietnam War, to try to flood deliberately the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So, there’s a whole Cold War history around weather modification. So this is a new incarnation of an old story and the idea that this could be done at a global scale as a climate fix. But, of course, once you unleash these technologies, you don’t—it’s not well-meaning climate scientists who decide how it’s going to be deployed. It’s governments who decide how it’s going to be deployed. And you can easily see a scenario where, you know, say, the U.S. and Europe do a sort of emergency geoengineering response that has a negative effect on China and India, and they then retaliate with their own. You know, the point is, I don’t think this is around the corner, but I do think it underscores just how radical a situation we find ourselves in, that serious people are seriously discussing this as if it’s sane. It’s not. And that should prompt us, I think, to talk about much saner solutions, like, hey, we can switch to 100 percent renewable energy. We have examples like Germany. They’re heading for 60 percent renewable energy in a decade. You know, why don’t we do that instead, because it’s a lot lower risk? It does require us to challenge the—it does require that we have this ideological war, that we take on corporate power, which is why it is so important that we’re having actions like Flood Wall Street and that we have a new generation of climate activists that understand who the actual barriers to climate action is, because I think most people would rather put a solar panel on their roof than turn down the sun -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com>. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. ________________________________ [1]. See ENMOD, supra note 81, art. II (“[T]he term ‘environmental modification techniques’ refers to any technique for changing—through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes—the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.”). [2]. Id. art. I.1. [3]. Id. art. III.1. [4]. Id. pmbl. [5]. Id. art. III.2. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
