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Remaking the World to Save It: Applying U.S. Environmental Laws to Climate Engineering Projects

Author(s): Hester T

Published: February, 2011

Publisher: SSRN eLibrary

Tags: Law

URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1755203

Abstract: Given the high levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and the likelihood of growing emissions in the future, even aggressive limits on greenhouse gas emissions might ultimately fail to prevent dangerous climate disruptions. To prepare for this risk, some scientists have started to explore techniques that directly influence or control global and regional climatic systems to offset climate change effects. As climate engineering research expands, U.S. environmental law could become an important first forum for efforts to control nascent climate engineering technologies. Federal and state agencies should start now to map out regulatory strategies and guidance for potential requests to authorize climate engineering experiments or to control objectionable projects. Climate engineering will also offer an unprecedented test of the scope of federal judicial power and the institutional competence of U.S. courts to review environmental projects designed to have a literally global impact. Prior climate change tort actions have tested the ability of courts to ascribe responsibility or assign liabilities to individual parties for damages caused by widely dispersed global activities. Climate engineering presents the mirror image of climate change public nuisance actions: rather than affixing responsibility for a share of a global phenomenon, lawsuits against climate engineering projects can pursue a clearly identifiable small number of parties who expressly and intentionally attempt to create global climate effects. Federal courts in particular may need to review key doctrines (including standing, political question, redressability and proximate causation) to account for a potential role as the domestic court system of first resort for legal challenges to global environmental remediation projects.


Law and Policy Issues of Unilateral Geoengineering: Moving to a Managed World

Author(s): Davies GT

Published: October, 2009

Publisher: SSRN eLibrary

Tags: Security, Policy, Law

URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1334625

Abstract: Geoengineering is usually understood to mean the deliberate manipulation of the climate. A number of techniques have been proposed to achieve this, from innovative ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, to the seeding of clouds or the spraying of dust in the upper atmosphere. Three facts make these proposals of importance. Firstly, some of the techniques discussed, it is claimed, could significantly or even entirely offset the effects of human-induced global warming. Secondly, they are in some cases relatively cheap and easy to carry out, even within the budgetary and technical reach of a large private organization or a single small state. Thirdly, the full effects of the techniques are not known, and it is distinctly possible that alongside, or even instead of, causing any reduction in temperature, geoengineering would also cause global or local side-effects that would be undesirable or even catastrophic. It follows that motivation to experiment is very significant, since there is much to gain. Given the accessibility of the technology, there is a very high chance that geoengineering techniques will be applied, by someone, somewhere. However, there is also much to lose. There is therefore an obvious case for some kind of international regulation. This paper aims to identify and outline some of the practical and conceptual problems that such regulation would face.


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