TY - JOUR
T1 - On the Permissibility (Or Otherwise) of Negative Emissions
AU - Lenzi, Dominic
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to Jan Minx and Sabine Fuss for my understanding of negative emissions, and especially to Henry Shue for discussion and comments upon an earlier draft. Remaining errors are my own. I also wish to thank participants at the European Consortium of Political Research in Oslo, 2017, and at the workshop on ‘Second-Best Solutions and Secondary Injustices’ at the University of Warwick, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions (NETs), a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue that they could be part of minimally just responses to climate change. In doing so, I identify a dilemma between limiting warming to 1.5 ° C, which promises lower climate impacts but implies greater NETs risks, and 2°C, which requires less NETs but promises greater climate impacts. Finally, I consider what the case of NETs reveals about permissibility in the face of non-compliance with principles of climate justice.
AB - Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions (NETs), a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue that they could be part of minimally just responses to climate change. In doing so, I identify a dilemma between limiting warming to 1.5 ° C, which promises lower climate impacts but implies greater NETs risks, and 2°C, which requires less NETs but promises greater climate impacts. Finally, I consider what the case of NETs reveals about permissibility in the face of non-compliance with principles of climate justice.
KW - Carbon dioxide removal
KW - Climate justice
KW - Geoengineering
KW - Negative emissions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100892947&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/21550085.2021.1885249
DO - 10.1080/21550085.2021.1885249
M3 - Article
VL - 24
SP - 123
EP - 136
JO - Ethics, Policy and Environment
JF - Ethics, Policy and Environment
SN - 2155-0085
IS - 2
ER -