The potential for climate engineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections to reduce climate injustice

ABSTRACT

Climate engineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections (SSAI) has the potential to reduce risks of injustice related to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Relying on evidence from modeling studies, this paper makes the case that SSAI could have the potential to reduce many of the key physical risks of climate change identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such risks carry potential injustice because they are often imposed on low-emitters who do not benefit from climate change. Because SSAI has the potential to reduce those risks, it thereby has the potential to reduce the injustice associated with anthropogenic emissions. While acknowledging important caveats, including uncertainty in modeling studies and the potential for SSAI to carry its own risks of injustice, the paper argues that there is a strong case for continued research into SSAI, especially if attention is paid to how it might be used to reduce emissions-driven injustice.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• justice
• climate engineering
• risk

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing us to consider this point.

2. For example, see: Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm, ch. 10.

3. Note that our focus here is SSAI with a moderate injection of stratospheric sulfate aerosols, for which we have some observational records after large volcanic eruptions and a growing number of modeling studies. This may not be the case for other aerosol materials, such as alumina, titanium dioxide, etc.

4. This is how the difference is described in John Rawls (1993).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number N/A]; Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research: [Grant Number N/A]; Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program: [Grant Number N/A].