Into the Great Wide Open? A Roundtable Discussion on Climate Change Geoengineering

October 17, 2013, 12.00-1.30pm

Johns Hopkins University, 1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC, Room 204

RSVP for live event:

Online streaming of event, in collaboration with Climate Nexus:  http://www.livestream.com/climatenexus

Moderator: Wil Burns, Associate Director, Energy Policy & Climate program, Johns Hopkins University

Panelists:

• Lee Lane, Visiting Scholar, Hudson Institute
• Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute, Washington, DC
• Simon Nicholson, Assistant Professor of International Relations, School of International Service, American University

Up until recently, climate change geoengineering, defined by the UK’s Royal Society as “the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change,” was viewed as outside the mainstream, or as Professor David Victor has put it less charitably, “a freak show in otherwise serious discussions of climate science and policy.” However, the feckless response of the global community to climate change ensures that temperatures are likely to rise to levels during this century that could have potentially catastrophic implications for human institutions and ecosystems. This had led to increasingly serious consideration of the potential role of geoengineering as a potential means to avert a “climate emergency,” such as rapid melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, or as a stopgap measure to buy time for effective emissions mitigation responses. This roundtable will examine the ethical, legal and political issues associated with climate change geoengineering research and development and potential deployment.