The Panglossian politics of the geoclique
Open accessAbstract
Solar radiation management (SRM) – a form of geoengineering – creates a risk of ‘termination shock’. If SRM was to be stopped abruptly then temperatures could rise very rapidly with catastrophic impacts. Two prominent geoengineering researchers have recently argued that the risk of termination shock could be minimised through the adoption of ‘relatively simple’ policies. This paper shows their arguments to be premised on heroically optimistic assumptions about the prospects for global cooperation and sustained trust in an SRM deployment scenario. The paper argues that worst-case scenarios are the right place to start in thinking about the governance of SRM.
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SAI redundancies are likely to be expensive and thus inconsistently implemented.
“SAI redundancies specifically are likely to be expensive and thus inconsistently implemented (Halstead, 2018; Parker and Irvine, 2018; McKinnon, 2020).”
From A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk (2021) · cites this paper as McKinnon, 2020
Section 2 (page unavailable) says a shadow backup infrastructure would at least double deployment costs and that maintaining it would require difficult, sustained cooperation. It does not say that expense would cause SAI redundancies to be implemented inconsistently; the implementation concern it develops is chiefly about cooperation and trust. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Flagged first, then by citations
1 of the 40 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 6
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- Hourdequin M., 2019, Ethics, Policy & Environment
- McKinnon C., 2018, Environmental.
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
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Bounding Planetary Insecurities
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- Authors
- McKinnon, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- Corresponding author
- McKinnon, Catriona
- ORCID
- McKinnon, Catriona
- Venue
- Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-11-20
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 584-599
- ISSN
- 1369-8230 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-8772
- OpenAlex
- W2980615677
- Semantic Scholar
- 890dee322c9b76875213a998c3c3559f63351def
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 0.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (publishedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Space exploration and regulation
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
- Keywords
- solar radiation management, geoengineering, termination shock, geoengineering governance, international cooperation, trust, worst-case scenario, climate policy
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