Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth's climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM's effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM's effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment.

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth s climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM s effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM s effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment."

Around the world, countries and companies are setting net-zero carbon emissions targets. But "net-zero" is a term that conveniently obscures multiple futures. There could be a version of net-zero where the fossil fuel industry is still spewing tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and has built a corresponding industry in sucking it back out again. Holly Buck argues that focusing on emissions draws our attention away from where we need to be looking: the point of production. It is time to plan for the end of fossil fuel and the companies that profit from them. Fossil fuels still provide 80% of world energy and ceasing their use before there are ready alternatives brings risks of energy poverty. The fossil fuel industry provides jobs, as well as a source of revenue for some frontline communities. Conventional wisdom says that fossil fuels will be naturally priced out when cheaper, but this raises as many problems as it addresses. Ending Fossil Fuels tackles these problems seriously and also sets out a roadmap that offer opportunities for more liveable, inclusive future.

Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductive idea. We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo, but is there another possible future after geoengineering? Can these technologies and practices be used to bring carbon levels back down to pre-industrial levels? Are there possibilities for massive intentional intervention in the climate that are democratic, decentralised, or participatory? These questions are provocative, because they go against a binary that has become common sense: geoengineering is assumed to be on the side of industrial agriculture, inequality and ecomodernism, in opposition to degrowth, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and climate justice. After Geoengineering rejects this binary, to ask: what if the people seized the means of climate production? Both critical and utopian, the book examines the possible futures after geoengineering. Rejecting the idea that geoengineering is some kind of easy work-around, Holly Buck outlines the kind of social transformation that would be necessary to enact a programme of geoengineering in the first place.