Presentation: Climate engineering
Jesse Reynolds, postdoctoral researcher at the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, presented an introduction to climate engineering and the law thereof.
Anthropogenic climate change presents grave and increasing risks to people and ecosystems. Despite the recent Paris Agreement, cuts to greenhouse gas emissions will likely be insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change, especially in the short term. In response, some scientists and others propose researching and possibly using climate engineering: intentional large scale interventions in natural systems in order to reduce climate change.
The proposed methods are diverse, and some appear to have the potential to substantially reduce climate change. However, they pose substantial environmental and social risks of their own. Legal and other forms of regulation will be necessary to help explore and develop climate engineering’s potential to reduce climate risks while avoiding possible hazards and pitfalls.
Reynolds introduced some of the legal topics that he has researched in his work.
Presentation
You can download the presentation: Climate Engineering (pdf).