Ethical Considerations of Direct Cooling and Greenhouse Gas Removal

Ethical considerations are a primary concern that is nuanced to the actions of our current climate culture that do not robustly evaluate risks for climate tipping element activation. (See the Risks Section for more on the risks of actions that are not currently a part of our existing climate culture.)

The proper evaluation of ethical concerns must fundamentally look at the ethics of specific actions. If actions are not defined as a part of ethical considerations, those actions are not relevant to the ethics of undefined actions. This is what we see with direct cooling and greenhouse gas removal actions that are not included except as caveats in our current climate culture that includes individual climate science findings and consensus climate science reviews. In order to evaluate the ethical concerns of direct cooling and greenhouse gas removal actions, we must first understand what these actions are.

Ethical considerations of direct cooling and greenhouse gas removal actions are relevant to the specific actions. For example, ethical consideration of tropospheric aerosol cooling is different from stratospheric aerosol cooling. With tropospheric aerosol cooling, the action is defined as temporarily pausing, rescinding or reducing the regulatory requirements for limiting naturally occurring sulfur in fossil fuels so that the sulfur burned can create cooling aerosols that counterbalance the effects of warming from the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels.

Tropospheric aerosols, versus stratospheric aerosols that are injected into the stratosphere using various methods, have been occurring since we began burning fossil fuels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that cooling aerosols have masked about 40 percent of the warming incurred to date (IPCC AR6, Chapter 7, Figure 7.6). Air pollution regulations that limit sulfur in fossil fuels to limit respiratory disease-causing sulfur emissions have been reducing sulfur content in fossil fuels in developed nations since the 1970s, and new regulations in shipping fuels and pollution abatement in China and India, and new ultrafine aerosol particle emissions rules (mostly sulfur) from direct injection gasoline engines in Europe, China and the US, have further limited cooling sulfur emissions, further reducing aerosol cooling and unmasking warming.

Because we have robust knowledge of the respiratory disease-causing aspects of aerosol sulfur from burning fossil fuels for fifty years, and we understand the regional weather that has been occurring as we emitted these cooling aerosols, we have direct knowledge of the impacts of direct cooling with tropospheric aerosols in fossil fuels. This knowledge is used to evaluate the risks of direct cooling with aerosols versus further warming to 1.5 degrees C in our current climate culture where the effects of irreversible tipping are untenable. Compared to the 7 or 8 million deaths from tropospheric sulfur aerosol emissions, untenable results of further warming create much stronger ethical concerns.

Comparing tropospheric aerosol emissions to stratospheric aerosols is another matter. The effects of stratospheric aerosols are well-studied in volcanic eruptions, but these are point source emissions of different quality than proposed stratospheric aerosol injection with sulfur. The literature on the hypothetical effects of tropospheric aerosol injection does show that far less sulfur is required to attain the same amount of cooling as done by volcanoes, or by the sulfur emissions from fossil fuels in the stratosphere. However, these tropospheric effects from purposeful injection have no existing knowledge counterpart. To better understand the effects of stratospheric aerosol injection, real world trials are needed so that an appropriate risk/risk evaluation can be effected. One of the plausible ways to obtain this real-world data is learning by doing.

Learning by doing with most direct cooling strategies that do not yet have a robust knowledge base of effects, includes small field tests that are evaluated and then repeated on a larger scale. By building knowledge with this strategy, ethical considerations of ill effects can be evaluated.

The above is a description of the ethical considerations of just one direct cooling strategy. Most other direct cooling and greenhouse gas removal strategies also need learning by doing in their implementation.

Greenhouse gas removal processes are a different matter entirely.

We have been removing CO2 from our atmosphere since the later part of the 19th century, with strategies that are now widespread in industry, pivotal to industrial efficiency, and with components that are even more widespread and pivotal to industrial processes worldwide.

In 1904 the recyclable lime-potash process was developed to separate CO2 from air as a simple chemical reaction using extremely common potash and lime. In 1892, Chalres Linde of Linde Air Products was contracted by Guinness Brewing to remove CO2 from air from Guiness’ brewing, so it could be liquified and sold as an industrial feedstock. Notable applications were in submarines in World War II to keep our sailors safe form carbon dioxide poisoning. Also in World War II, the Habor-Bosch process was developed to synthesize ammonia from air in Germany, mostly for explosives, as the Allies had cut off the German supplies of guano and nitrate needed to generate the ammonia. This process became an extremely important process globally in synthesizing fertilizers. An important part of this process is removing CO2 to allow the formation of ammonia. This CO2 removal process advanced the state of amine technology for removal of CO2 from air. These processes are mature today and represent some of the most important and common industrial processes known to humankind. Their components are widespread in industry making their implementation into a scaled atmospheric CO2 removal infrastructure a challenge of motivation and money, not technology.

Where ethics are concerned with these mature and widespread CO2 removal processes, these ethics are already addressed with existing regulations, rule and law. Undoubtedly, better regulations could be developed but fundamentally, these processes are an established and mature part of our global culture’s industrial machine.

Ethics of Decarbonization and Emissions Elimination

Developed nations have the luxury of wealth to bind them to emissions actions. Developing nations on the other hand, do not have this luxury and incur financial stress when emissions reductions demands are placed upon them. Developed nations to date, have not supplied enough financial incentive to offset this economic stress.

Developed nations have also incurred the luxury of advanced living that only wealth can impart. Developed nations do not have this luxury because their economic position is poor.

Developed nations have acquired luxurious behaviors that developing nations aspire too. These behaviors are almost completely because of very cheap and portable energy. Developing nations are struggling just to acquire these same cheap and portable energy sources. When asked to change their path to renewables, even though these sources are cheaper than existing fossil fuel energy, their implementation requires the installation of an energy transmission and transportation infrastructure that developing nations do costs far more than simply switching energy source from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

These three things enforce an inequitable tax on developing nations, relative to the luxury that time and wealth have afforded to developed nations.