Thread by @mclaren_erc

1/25 Our new paper on #MitigationDeterrence effect of Greenhouse Gas Removal #GGR #CDR and how to minimize it is out.

Coauthored with @nilsmarkusson @bankfieldbecky @szersynski @dtyfield, @Lancs_LEC

Full paper #openaccess here in EPE: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25… @envplane

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2/25 Sadly this took a long time to get published … perhaps appropriate for a paper called ‘attractions of delay’ which explains climate procrastination as a predictable outcome of multiple reasons for prevarication. Fortunately the findings are still topical …

3/25 TLDR1: #GGR discourses exemplify how tech promises enable prevarication by being enrolled in scientific, cultural, economic & political processes; many stakeholders share concerns that #MitigationDeterrence is arising from exaggerated expectations of future GGR tech.

4/25 TLDR2: Recognizing the risks takes a shift of deliberative register, to embrace cultural, political & economic effects. To counter risks stakeholders suggest separate targets for removals and emissions cuts, & interventions to reduce the power of incumbent vested interests

5/25 Unpacking a little … Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) may help achieve #NetZero targets by balancing any residual, ‘recalcitrant’ emissions, and might compensate for an overshoot in greenhouse gas emissions over time, by subsequently drawing down carbon from the atmosphere...

6/25 Deterrence would be of little concern in either case if the amounts involved could be objectively fixed. Yet both ‘recalcitrant’ emissions and ‘unavoidable’ overshoot are matters of political debate and scientific uncertainty, subject to contestation and at risk of abuse.

7/25 We convened 9 deliberative workshops in which stakeholders from business, academia, NGOs, unions, media & government were exposed to futures scenarios involving #MitigationDeterrence to explore, challenge and reflect upon the mechanisms involved and possible responses.

8/25 All the scenarios (for 4 different political futures and 4 different GGR techniques) are available in supplementary information. We’d love to see them re-used and tested in other settings, where conventional climate scenarios and modelling can be equally constraining.

9/25 btw three years on from developing these scenarios it is worrying to see how many of the mechanisms we predicted have already begun to emerge alongside continued promises that future mitigation through #hydrogen, #fusion or #CarbonMarkets can offset inadequate action now

10/25 While stakeholders accepted the historic persistence of climate delay, some resisted the idea that similar processes, involving #GGR, may be happening now. We identified 3 distinct discursive strategies that might be used to deflect concerns about mitigation deterrence ...

11/25 … 1/ that both GGR and emissions reduction are necessary (so one will not deter the other), 2/ that GGR is too difficult and expensive to deter emissions reduction, and 3/ ‘someone would do something’ before deterrence effects got too bad. But …

12/25 … these objections are all ‘rationalist’ interpretations that largely disregard historical experience, continued active resistance by vested interests, repeated technological promises of future action, and the deep irrationality of political disinformation and fake news.

13/25 We considered calling the paper ‘the half-life of bullshit’, from a stakeholder discussion on how long false promises, discrediting of expertise, vested interests and downright lies could sustain a policy stance … Sadly the jury is still out on the answer to that question.

14/25 Our findings suggest that there are good reasons to worry about #MitigationDeterrence, and that concerns about deterrence effects are widely shared amongst climate/GGR stakeholders. Yet the failure so far to achieve adequate mitigation makes delivering #GGR important too.

15/25 Stakeholders overwhelmingly supported interventions that would help minimize the impacts of deterrence within a broad climate strategy that includes positive support for GGR, and saw many potential synergies between measures to support GGR and reduce deterrence.

16/25 Challenging fossil incumbency, increasing climate accountability, separating targets, support and accounting regimes for GGR and emissions reduction, and establishing tough regimes for monitoring, reporting and verification were all seen as win-win options.

17/25 It is critical, however, not to simply to declare the possibility of mitigation deterrence ‘irrational’, but to name, acknowledge and engage with it, and with its underlying drivers, especially if we are to avoid ‘moral corruption’ abc.net.au/radionational/…

18/25 Unlike most previous tech promises, GGR exaggeration cannot be rationally dispelled in real-time, #GGR acts as a ‘time-machine’ in climate policy, promising future reversal of past emissions, a ‘retro-techno-fix’ - a technological promise which can ‘change the past’

19/25 #GGR promises new opportunities for offsetting and carbon commodification. The spatial carbon frontier (of avoidance offsetting) may be closing as carbon budgets run out, but GGR promises are extending a temporal carbon frontier through poorly regulated removals offsetting.

20/n #GGR discourse exemplifies the way technological promises are enrolled in cultural, economic and political processes to enable prevarication and delay where instrumental technological promises avoid threatening the dominant social order (@lamb_wf et al)

21/25 Evaluations of #GGR on a ‘rationalist’ purely scientific register both overestimate feasibility and underpin multiple dynamics of delay, ‘enabled’ by politically naïve scientific endorsement of ideological constructs such as commodification and offsetting.

22/25 We hope our explanation of the ways technological promises are mobilized in service of a dominant social imaginary helps decision-makers understand and begin to overcome the striking disjunctures between declarations of #ClimateEmergency and political procrastination.

23/25 We caution against reacting to this research by dismissing the risk. The analysis already shows that such stances are typically rooted in misplaced confidence in the rationality of markets and politics, & thus tend to undermine delivery of climate and sustainability goals.

24/25 On the other hand we hope to see further healthy discussion about the right balance and type of measures that could best accelerate delivery of #GGR whilst minimising further #MitigationDeterrence risks.

25/25 Thanks to our funders @UKGGRprogramme at #UKRI, all our workshop participants, & to reviewers and editors at EPE @envplane
Here’s the link again: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25…
Hopefully of interest to @wim_carton @JKSteinberger @MirandaBoe @DrRobBellamy @AJCorner @Mark_Turner_

PS: Also may be of interest to @doug_parr @stv_smth @jenniecstephens @DiscussCEC @BenjaminSovaco1 @hollyjeanbuck @jpasztor @doreenstabinsky @ClimateSSN @phil_renforth @lamb_wf