https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-72372-9_5
A Human Rights Framework for Climate Engineering: A Response to the Limits of Cost-Benefit Analysis Brian Citro, Patrick Taylor Smith Abstract We argue that normative evaluations of climate engineering responses to climate change have been impoverished by an excessive focus on cost-benefit analyses. We suggest that human rights can serve as an effective foundation for richer deliberations concerning the judiciousness of deploying climate engineering options. This chapter proceeds in four main sections. The first describes cost-benefit analysis, explains its role in evaluating public policy, and lays out its limitations. Then, we develop a human rights framework for the evaluation of climate engineering and consider how it avoids the problems of cost-benefit analysis. Yet, the third section describes why a human rights framework might have limited usefulness, because it does not offer adequate action guidance when making tradeoffs between rights or when weighing concurrent impacts on different groups. As a reaction, in the fourth section, we develop a set of principles and conceptual tools to revise the human rights framework so it is more effective in cases where it is necessary to prioritize certain human rights and evaluate impacts on different groups. We consider whether there is a hierarchy of rights that will assist with tradeoffs, and we examine core and periphery obligations stemming from human rights. We then consider whether a focus on vulnerable or marginalized groups helps to weigh impacts on different groups, and we discuss the principle of non-retrogression. Finally, we consider an approach that combines these ideas to address competing human rights claims and avoid narrowly construed zero-sum games. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAKSzgpaUoV5Lofs7Pqt4349exB763X0PxbOjeLSv-1tofTqSHg%40mail.gmail.com.