Blurred Lines: The Ethics and Policy of Greenhouse Gas Removal at Scale
Open accessAbstract
The topic of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) for climate geoengineering is becoming increasingly salient following the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report and the Paris Agreement. GGR is thought of as a separate category to mitigation techniques such as low-carbon supply or demand reduction, yet multiple social, ethical and acceptability concerns cut across categories. We propose moving beyond classifying climate strategies as a set of discrete categories (which may implicitly homogenise diverse technologies), towards a prioritisation of questions of scale of both technology and decision-making in the examination of social and ethical risks. This is not just a theoretical issue: important questions for policy, governance and finance are raised, for instance over the future inclusion of GGR in carbon markets. We argue that the conclusions drawn about how best to categorise, govern and incentivise any strategy will depend on the framing used, because different framings could lead to very different policy recommendations being drawn. Because of this, a robust approach to developing, governing and financing GGR should pay attention first to urgent concerns regarding democracy, justice and acceptability.
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Deployment of any CDR strategy is inhibited by concern that it may erode society's perception of the climate threat and the urgency of mitigation measures.
“Deployment of any CDR strategy is inhibited by concern that it may erode society's perception of the climate threat and the urgency of mitigation measures 54 .”
From Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands (2020) · cites this paper as [54]
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands
Beerling, D. J., Kantzas, E. P., Lomas, M. R., Wade, P., Eufrasio, R. M., Renforth, P., Sarkar, B., Andrews, M. G., James, R. H., Pearce, C. R., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9 · Cited by 700 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Cox, E. M., Pidgeon, N., Spence, E., & Thomas, G.
- Affiliations
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (GB)
- Cardiff University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Cox, Emily M.
- Venue
- Frontiers in Environmental Science
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2018-05-29
- Volume
- 6
- ISSN
- 2296-665X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2803424912
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 3.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Frontiers in Environmental Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Leverhulme Trust
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Keywords
- greenhouse gas removal, geoengineering, ethics of geoengineering, social acceptance, emissions trading, democracy, justice, framing, climate policy
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