Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2018

Publication Title

Strategic Studies Quarterly

Volume

12

Issue

2

First Page

82

Last Page

106

Abstract

As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, called geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies. Geoengineering includes methods of carbon dioxide removal and/or solar radiation management and can theoretically achieve significant reductions in warming-related environmental changes, but they are scientifically untested. Geoengineering technologies have the potential to disrupt the global ecological status quo and mount a potentially coercive threat with implications as serious as those in wartime. Several of these technologies can be deployed from the global commons, but international law provides no more than indirect guidance as to how they should be governed as a matter of international security. We argue that, lacking explicit scientific or legal guidance, just war theory provides a useful normative framework for restraining the use of environmental force. Modifying just war theory into “just geoengineering theory” will provide ethical standards for security decision makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used.

Comments

Authors hold the copyright to this work, any reuse or permissions must be obtained from them directly.

This was first published in the Strategic Studies Quarterly journal and can be accessed at https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-12_Issue-2/Chalecki_Ferrari.pdf

Download

Share

COinS