The ethics of negative emissions

Abstract

Non-technical abstractLimiting dangerous climate change is widely believed to require negative emissions. This prospect has sparked concerns about whether negative emissions could be scaled up quickly enough, along with concerns about their likely ethical costs. Building upon scenario modelling, this paper examines ethical concerns with negative emissions via the comparison of three alternate climate futures. This paper shows that the severity of concerns depends upon implementation conditions, and especially the extent of deferred mitigation. Negative emissions can be a valuable means of limiting dangerous climate change, or an unjust gamble against the future.

Negative emissions—Part 1: Research landscape and synthesis

“…In our view, three issues in particular stand out in need of future ethical analysis (Lenzi 2018). These are first, that NETs might create a moral hazard against mitigation; second (and relatedly), that an implicit policy bet on NETs that are unproven at scale may lock in worse climate-related harms if they failed to deliver; and third, that the sheer scale of NETs deployment observed in mitigation scenarios is staggeringly hubristic.…”

CO2 Removal With Enhanced Weathering and Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement: Potential Risks and Co-benefits for Marine Pelagic Ecosystems

“…There is yet little public funding, generally no established legal framework, and no social acceptance to ramp up any NET to the necessary scale (Oschlies and Klepper, 2017;Braun et al, 2018;Nemet et al, 2018). The public reservations are justified since NETs raise ethical concerns (Lin, 2013;Lawford-Smith and Currie, 2017;Shue, 2017;Lenzi, 2018) and may be associated with side effects for the Earth system (Keller et al, 2014;Fuss et al, 2018;Gattuso et al, 2018). However, since NETs will very likely become key tools for keeping global warming below 2 • C it is vital to assess their associated environmental risks before their initiation (Oschlies and Klepper, 2017).…”

Climate Change and CCS Technologies: Managerial and Political Issues

“…The deployment of such sequestration methods is therefore virtually non-existent. This also illustrates the issues surrounding negative emissions (Lenzi, 2018) or a carbon-negative future (Minx et al, 2017). There is also the need to counter Anderson & Peters" (2016) gloomy notion that such developments would lead to a carbon addiction, as since the 1750s society has largely become used to this resource and most find it a necessity.…”