The problematic governance of climate engineering

Deployment of climate engineering faces formidable and perhaps insurmountable governance challenges, even if it looks technically feasible.  This prospect should reinforce efforts to reduce emissions.

If climate change becomes too severe some might favour climate engineering  …

This post looks very briefly at governance of climate engineering – managing the total net solar radiation the earth absorbs (Solar Radiation Management), most likely by injecting particles into the stratosphere[i].  I’ll assume a highly favourable case in which deployment appears technically feasible, likely to be at least partly  effective and cheap; is gradual and modified in response to experience; and seeks only to moderate changes, for example by offsetting (say) half of the additional radiative forcing in order to reduce the risks[ii].

Whatever its merits, almost no one who has looked seriously as the issues thinks that climate engineering is a substitute for reducing emissions.  There are problems that climate engineering won’t fix, such as ocean acidification.   There are also likely to be severe side-effects, such as disruption to rainfall patterns.  And the full effects of deployment are impossible to know in advance, even after thorough research.

Despite these drawbacks, many are becoming concerned that slow progress in reducing emissions may require climate engineering as the least undesirable option – an emergency response to forestall imminent catastrophic climate change.

But the control of any “global thermostat” is likely to be contentious …

However, it is not at all clear how agreement would be reached to deploy climate engineering, and how the deployment would then be governed.  The effects of climate engineering will be global, so some kind of global arrangement will be necessary for general acceptance of its legitimacy.  But different parts of the world would be affected differently, with consensus about what constitutes an emergency unlikely[iii].  Some vulnerable countries might favour deployment even at a relatively low threshold.  Others may be more cautious.  Some are likely to be against deployment on principle.  There might also be demands by some for compensation for adverse effects that could be very difficult to agree.  And acceptance may need to go beyond governments to the public, which is likely to have widely differing views.

These difficulties are likely to be compounded because early action may be required to forestall an emergency, because of lags in the climate system.  However signals may not be sufficiently clear early enough, so any emergency may become irreversible before there is agreement on action.

Intergenerational effects complicate things further.  Climate engineering would commit future generations to certain pathways, and the legitimacy of this would be difficult to establish.

With unilateral action a severe risk …

Failure to reach some kind of global agreement might lead to a single country, or small groups of countries, deploying unilaterally whatever the doubts about the legitimacy of such actions.  This would be very likely lead to international tension and potentially to conflict as states saw their vital national interests threatened.  This conflict would likely be exacerbated the problems of dealing with climate change, including, for example, threats to food supplies and large-scale migration.  This could in turn reduce trust and political co-operation, making agreement even more difficult.  It is hard to say how serious such a scenario would be, but it is not a welcome prospect and could potentially become an immensely dangerous threat to global political and social stability.

But no clear route to building the necessary frameworks to ensure legitimacy of  deployment …

All of this implies at the very least the need for strong frameworks – international treaties and processes, perhaps underpinning new institutions – to manage any deployment and reduce the risks of conflict.    There is currently very little in place.  Some existing laws and institutions are relevant, and initial regulation is likely to build gradually drawing on some of these[iv].  For example, states that are party to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity have adopted a decision that explicitly restricts implementation of climate engineering that may affect biodiversity (which is in practice all likely cases) until a scientific basis exists to justify it taking account of the risks.  However this is not intended for broader decisions making.  The Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) may require Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) to be made.  In some cases the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or other Hostile use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) may be relevant.  The UNFCCC could play a role, although does not appear to be doing so to date, as could UNEP and international forums such as the G20.  The UN Security Council could get involved in the case of conflict.  Lessons from outside environmental governance may be helpful, such as those from nuclear non-proliferation.

However none these arrangements appear sufficient for wider governance of climate engineering deployment, or to be likely to grow into something adequate.  This implies the need for a new institution or at least a set of formal arrangements for global governance, which at the very least substantially expands the remit of current institutions and treaties.

The precedents for effectiveness of any such regime do not look promising.  The UNFCCC has over 20 years failed to reach adequate agreement on mitigation pathways, despite reduction of emissions being unambiguously a good thing, although potentially costly.  Whatever agreement is reached in Paris in a few weeks it looks likely to remain inadequate to the required task.

Indeed there does not appear to be an example of global agreement to effectively manage a problem anything like as consequential, difficult, and diverse and extensive in its impacts as climate engineering.  For example the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion dealt with a much more tractable problem.  Effective arrangements for governing climate engineering may simply prove impossible to realise.

Some sorts of global emergency might arise that is so clear cut that all major nations can agree that the only remaining possibility is deployment of climate engineering.  But this sounds more like international panic than international governance.

Implying all the more need for greater emissions reductions …

It is often said that the technological problems and risks of climate engineering imply that there in every need to put as much effort as possible into emissions abatement.  This is true.  But governance also matters.  The lack of good prospects for adequate and effective governance of climate engineering, as much as any technical challenges it may raise, should reinforce concentration on efforts to reduce emissions.

Adam Whitmore – September 2015

Thanks to Carlos Munoz Browning, who provided me with his research, on which some of this post draws .

References

[i] A good review of such techniques and their application is provided in the US National Academy of Sciences recent report at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18988/climate-intervention-reflecting-sunlight-to-cool-earth

[ii] For more on this type of scenario see:  A temporary, moderate and responsive scenario for solar geoengineering, David W. Keith  & Douglas G. MacMartin Nature Climate Change 5,  201–206 (2015)

[iii] For a fuller discussion of some of these points see Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate, Jana Sillmann, et al. Nature Climate Change 5, 290–292 (2015)

[iv] For a discussion of some of these possibilities see Options and Proposals for the International Governance of Geoengineering, Bodle et al. (2013)

Development of carbon pricing could benefit from a two hundred year old idea

Cap-and-dividend and tax-and dividend arrangements, where proceeds from carbon pricing are returned equally to all citizens, at least in part, are already in place in Switzerland, and under discussion elsewhere.  They could help gain support from a wider constituency to enhance carbon pricing. 

A stake for all in the atmosphere …

Over two hundred years ago the political philosopher and campaigner Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Agrarian Justice.  It was an extraordinarily farsighted document (see notes at the end for relevant extracts).  He identified natural resources as the common property of humanity, with rights distinct from those of private property created by labour.  He thus distinguished between the value added to land by the work of proprietors and the common value of land, implicitly arising from its scarcity, which he linked to the idea of a ground rent.  He recommended that the natural property rights in the land that are owned by all citizens should be recovered for all, most conveniently in the form of a payment into a fund on inheritance of land.  He proposed redistributing this fund equally to all adults in the form of a payment when they turned twenty-one, and a universal old age pension.

Something very like this idea seems to offer a constructive way forward in the development of carbon pricing.  The atmosphere is common property to a greater extent even than land, because it is continually mixed and globally mobile.  It therefore, following Paine’s argument, belongs equally to all.  Anyone making use of that property by emitting greenhouse gases should pay for that right in the form of a payment (a carbon price) into a fund.  Again following Paine’s argument, the proceeds would then be distributed to all citizens equally, most likely as an annual payment.  Eventually this should be to all of the world’s people, but starting with one or more jurisdictions would establish the approach.  This is usually referred to as cap-and-dividend or tax-and-dividend, depending on the type of carbon pricing scheme – it can work well as part of either an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax.

Such a mechanism is already in place in Switzerland, where part of the revenue from the Swiss carbon tax is returned to citizens.  In the USA bills for such schemes have been proposed at both Federal and State level, with current proposals introduced in the state legislature in Oregon (see notes at the end for details).

Has many advantages …

Such an arrangement has number of advantages.

It gives citizens a direct stake in higher revenue from higher carbon prices, which may help carbon prices reach levels sufficient both to reflect the cost of damage and to provide adequate incentives for the scale of investment required for the transition to a low carbon economy.  At present prices are too low to do either.  (There is an implicit assumption here that citizens benefit from tighter caps and higher prices – e.g. a 20% reduction in the cap is likely to raise prices by more than 20%.  There might come a point when revenue is increased by higher emissions as elasticities fall below one, but we seem a long way from that, and indeed that point may never be reached.)

It also give citizens a direct stake in wider coverage of carbon pricing, , which would be likely to increase the economic efficiency of abatement.

It automatically provides compensation to residential consumers for higher energy bills due to carbon pricing.  Poorer consumers who on the whole have lower energy consumption would see a larger net benefit, especially as revenue would be raised from non-domestic consumers.  There are some exceptions to this – people on low incomes but with a large heating load for example – but further protection for vulnerable households can still be provided.

It also funds a basic income or “citizen’s dividend” to all.  The payment would currently be rather small but not insignificant.  With price of $40/tonne and global average current greenhouse gas emissions of about 7.5 tCO₂e per capita this would provide an income of up to $300 per year.  As emissions reduce the dividend might also reduce, but rising prices may more than offset this.

There is an argument made in the environmental economics literature that a lump-sum dispersal to citizens is suboptimal, because it is better to use funds to reduce other taxes and so reduce distortions.   There is little if any empirical support for this argument as far as I am aware.  But in any case the view that citizens own those property rights makes the limitation of the argument clear.  Not providing citizens with the proceeds from sale of allowances (or a tax on emissions) is in effect a 100% tax on everyone for that revenue.  This is indeed non-distortionary, but a fixed per-capita tax is not regarded by governments or their citizens as a good idea anywhere, for sound reasons.

Although there are other compelling calls on uses of funds  …

There are also powerful arguments for using revenue to adapt help and compensate those adversely affected by climate change.  However this has proved enormously difficult to achieve.  Cap and dividend can go some way towards providing benefits for all as carbon pricing continues to spread around the world, especially if emissions per capita gradually converge.  Indeed it provides a way of institutionalising benefits for all, which has until now proved unachievable.  Nevertheless further compensation and help with adaptation is likely to be needed for the poorest, and reducing impacts on future generations and on the biosphere will be a continuing challenge.

There are also good arguments for regarding the atmosphere to be as a joint, indivisible resource to be managed for the common benefit.  This goes further than Paine’s perspective in arguing for joint property rights, in part because of the different characteristics of individual land holdings and the global atmosphere.  The Pope’s recent encyclical on climate change adopts this type of perspective (see Section VI of the encyclical).  However, institutions for optimally managing common assets at the required global scale are weak or non-existent – if they were not the climate change problem would probably be well on the way to a solution by now.  Cap-and dividend falls short of an optimal approach, but nevertheless marks a practical step towards better management for all.

In advocating this approach I recognise that there are many other potential uses for revenue raised by carbon pricing, such as funding research and development of low carbon technologies.  Each has arguments in its favour, in many cases good ones, and a balance will need to be struck in practice between different uses of funds, with not all proceeds being paid as dividends directly to citizens.

And political obstacles remain …

Opposition in some quarters to the idea of a citizen’s dividend is likely to be strong.  National treasuries, for example, may resist the loss of control.  However the measure is fundamentally one that benefits everyone.  It will be a struggle to gain acceptance, but it is a struggle Thomas Paine would have relished.

Adam Whitmore – September 2015

Notes

Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (1797)

Paine includes the following passages.  He first distinguishes between natural and artificial property:

There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe—such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property—the invention of men.  In the latter, equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay.  Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.

He seeks to recover the value of this common property from the current owners into a fund.  This is conveniently done at the time of inheritance:

Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.

He then suggests the fund should be distributed equally to all adults:

To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

He emphasises that this is a matter of respecting rights, not a humanitarian initiative:

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed [from their natural rights to land], it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. 

Proposed Cap and Dividend Bills

Van Hollen Cap and Dividend Bill was proposed in the US Congress in 2009.  It proposed a cap with auctioning of 100% of allowances and border adjustments to prevent US industry being at a competitive disadvantage.  All auction proceeds would be returned in the form of a dividend to every lawful resident of the United States with a valid Social Security number.

More recently two bills have been proposed in the Orgeon House of Representatives.  HB3176 would charge fossil fuel sellers a fee (starting at $30/ton) for each ton of pollution.  All the money would go into a Trust Fund. Each September, the Department of Revenue would pay every Oregon taxpayer and taxpayer dependent a check for an equal share of the money.   HB3250, instead of creating a set fee, it would auction a capped number of allowances.

Revenue

54 billion tonnes p.a. of total GHG emissions (source: EDGAR), over 7.2 billion people is 7.5 tonne per capita.  $40/tonne is an illustrative figure close to the US EPA estimate of the Social Cost of Carbon.

Property rights

The subject of who, if anyone, owns the atmosphere is far too large a subject to go into here.  I will note simply that Paine’s view seems to have far more force that the notion due to Locke that permanent ownership of land is conferred by labour on that land, and in any case Locke’s proviso that common property can be owned provided  “… there is enough, and as good, left in common for others” clearly does not hold in the case of climate change.  The attempts of modern libertarian philosophers to deal with this issue, as for example Nozick does by denying that a free market system will actually run foul of the proviso, seem to me to be wholly inadequate.  None of which should imply I entirely agree with Paine’s characterisation of property rights either.