Transcript hansson_ - Climate Engineering Conference 2014

Exploring the Politics of
Climate Engineering:
Discourses For and Against
Climate Engineering in the
International Mass Media
JONAS ANSHELM & ANDERS HANSSON ([email protected]]
UNIT OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY CLIMATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMME (LUCE), LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN
Introduction

Anshelm J. & Hansson A. The last chance to save the planet? An analysis of geoengineering's advocates
discourse in the public debate. (under review)

Anshelm J. & Hansson A. (2014) Battling Promethean dreams and Trojan horses: Revealing the critical
discourses of geoengineering. Energy Research and Social Science. 2:135-144.

Aim: Identify the central claims, controversial subjects, and what worldviews, values, and
problematizations that are shared by the two discourses (the advocacy and critical discourse) in the
public debate
Why study geoengineering in mass media?

Specific portrayals may change the course of national and international policies, governance and
public opinion

Endorse a sound and reflexive debate
Introduction - methodology

About 1500 newspaper articles from all over the world, published between 2005 and 2013 in
English, German, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian

More than 75% of the articles were in English and published in either the USA or the UK.

A total of about 10% critical of geoengineering

We define geoengineering advocacy as recommending more geoengineering research or
deployment

Only deeply sceptical or opposed storylines are included in the discourse critical of
geoengineering

Geoengineering: Grand global project and an idea of humanity’s ultimate control of the planet’s
climate
Advocacy discourse
Storyline: The scientists’ double fear

Climate researchers now have re-evaluated the climate crisis and have started to advocate research
into geoengineering, even though it entails major risks. Either to inactively wait for the catastrophe or to
explore the final option: geoengineering.

Fear of the consequences of climate change is an asset or a powerful rhetorical resource (see also
Rayner, 2014).

Geoengineering is, unlike other large-scale technologies, not connected to promises of a better world –
negative expectations
Advocacy discourse
The failure of politics and cynical industrial fatalism

Politics has failed and can no longer reverse the situation – geoengineering is the price to be paid for
political failure.

This viewpoint sees politics as impeding efficient climate change management.

The resignation in this storyline rests on fatalism
Advocacy discourse
Pure technology: a bridge to a sustainable future

The development of geoengineering is referred to as “plan B”; it constitutes a “last-ditch” alternative,
“parachute”, “airbag”, and “last resort”.

It is possible to test, study, and identify the environmental consequences of geoengineering in advance,
but also admitted that such assumptions are highly problematic.
Advocacy discourse
Just mimicking nature

The most promising geoengineering technologies obtained their “proof of concept from nature”, it is
just about “mimicking nature”.

Has gradually gained influence over the last two or three years, and more or less replaced the storyline
of the scientist’s double fear.

De-politizising influence?
The discourse critical of geoengineering
The technological gamble with the planet

Geoengineering schemes are treated as more dangerous than any previous technological
enterprise, and are understood as “megalomania”
e.g. “a dangerous game with unclear rules”, “the biggest technological gamble of all”, “rolling the
dice”, “gaming with the earth”, “completely nutty”.

Global geoengineering is inherently untestable.
The discourse critical of geoengineering
The inability to handle structural dysfunction

The ultimate sign of contemporary industrial society's inability or unwillingness to confront
fundamental structural dysfunctionality:
“the ultimate expression of a desire to avoid doing the hard work of reducing emissions”

Geoengineering proponents are understood as defending the belief that it is unnecessary to
revise the goals of economic growth/increasing consumption
The discourse critical of geoengineering
The geoclique and the Trojan horse

An extreme and grand-scale form of industrial “greenwashing”

The main actors are a “geoclique” with personal economic interests

Venture capitalists and conservative think tanks together with the military form a powerful lobby
for geoengineering.

Intense lobbying is supporting the geoclique and trying to admit the “Trojan horse” (i.e.
geoengineering research)
The discourse critical of geoengineering
The democratic deficit and the need for public engagement

The really important questions concerning the incredible risks are neglected or forgotten by the
proponents

Primarily a moral and political concern, and not an issue to be left to scientists and engineers

Also creates new governance problems: It could be attempted unilaterally, or even be
militarized
Discussion

Contrary to what is claimed in the critical discourse, the advocacy discourse anticipated the main
problems of geoengineering and presented many central risks and moral concerns openly

As most other environmental innovations geoengineering is not framed as a typical ecological modern
technology by its proponents – even negative expectations. And few pure advocates

The debate seems to open up (see also Scholte, 2012), but is this seemingly shared view of the climate
crisis, acknowledgment of major risks and problems a good basis for a mutual understanding of
geoengineering?
Discussion: Tentative explanations of
diverging standpoints
1.
Field experiments will never provide the answers needed
2.
Geoengineering as a method for buying time in order to make way for renewables and a lowcarbon society is completely discounted in the critical discourse.
3.
Third, the most horrifying risks of geoengineering are, according to the discourse critical of
geoengineering, not directly related to its deployment, but to its reinforcement of unsustainable
social and economic structures.
4.
Geoengineering is depicted as an act of piracy, a form of neo-colonialism.
5.
Leading proponents of geoengineering are not primarily devoted to long-term sustainability
worldwide, but rather to promoting their own profits (e.g., from patent rights), advancing
personal careers, or serving the interests of think tanks or the fossil fuel industry.
6.
The discourse critical of geoengineering insists that international political action is both possible
and necessary (i.e. no “failure of politics”).
Concluding remarks

The advocacy discourse is more reflexive and critical than what is claimed in the critical
discourse

The fundamental dissensus between the two discourses is related mainly to the views on social
change, knowledge limits, and humanity's ability/right to control nature (see also e.g.
Hamilton, 2013).

Promises of progress and objective truth are no longer the legitimation grounds for research
into and deployment of the technology – fear and uncertainty are assets.

However, by the end of the studied period, considerable efforts are being made to enact
geoengineering as less uncertain, by emphasizing the mimicking nature storyline (de-politzising
influence?), while the ‘scientists double fear’ storyline and emergency framings are declining.