Washington D.C. – November 5, 2009 - Today in a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee, Republican Members expressed a wide range of concerns about the concept of geoengineering, a term which refers to the deliberate large-scale modification of the Earth’s climate.
“Further exploring the scientific basis underpinning the concept of geoengineering, and the ethical concerns and issues surrounding any future development and deployment scenarios could be extremely helpful in advancing the discussion about geoengineering,” said Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX). “I will reserve my full judgment on this issue until all the facts are in, but I have to admit I am a bit skeptical about this nontraditional approach.”
Geoengineering has recently gained attention as an alternative, potentially less costly way to mitigate some of the effects of climate change, as a stop-gap measure until more permanent solutions can be agreed upon. Such proposals have been very controversial on both sides of the climate change debate due to the high degree of uncertainty over potential environmental, economic and societal impacts. Further, many of those who want to focus solely on the reduction of GHG emissions claim that research into geoengineering diverts attention and resources from their efforts.
When asked why such drastic measures might be considered, some of the witnesses expressed doubt that limiting GHG emissions can be successful. One suggestion on how to limit emissions, proposed by Dr. Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor of Climatology at Rutgers University, advocated Americans decrease their consumption of beef. Conversely, Dr. Ken Caldeira, Professor of Environmental Science at Stanford University, said that he doesn’t believe that the climate change problem can be solved “by simply asking people to behave differently.”
Further, Dr. Lee Lane, Resident Fellow and the Co-director of the Geoengineering Project at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), argued that regardless of what GHG regulation policies the U.S. enacts, it is simply not in the national interest of countries like China or India to slow industrialization by reducing their own emissions. Lane argued that “for China and India, economic development offers better protection from harmful climate change than do GHG limits.”
Due to these unanswered questions about the efficacy of GHG regulation, today’s witnesses advocated an R&D program to target promising geoengineering technologies, which could someday act as a last-minute safety valve in the scenario of what they described as a “climate emergency.”
In September of this year, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society – an equivalent to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences - published what many consider to be the most significant report on geoengineering, entitled, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty, which outlines various geoengineering methods and the associated challenges. Other than this report, the body of work on geoengineering consists of a limited number of individual scientific papers exploring variations of a few theoretical strategies.
Today’s hearing is the first in a series on the subject of geoengineering to be conducted by the Committee.
The following witnesses also testified:
Professor John Shepherd, FRS, Professorial Research Fellow in Earth System Science, University of Southampton, and Chair, UK Royal Society working group that produced the report Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty; and
Dr. James Fleming, Professor and Director of Science, Technology and Society, Colby College and the author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.
For more information on today’s hearing, or to read witness testimony, please visit the GOP Science and Technology Committee website.