1. I agree that the mitigation obstruction argument is over-sold and not particularly strong, for many of the reasons you outline (in the real world, it seems to me that most pressure to do something on climate is not addressed by geo-engineering, so politicians face little incentive to over-emphasize geo-engineering, rather they will underemphasize it compared to potential given the demonization and the perceived strength of the obstruction argument in public discourse).
2. That said, you do seem to miss one key aspect of solar geo-engineering compared to other environmental interventions, that it is incredibly cheap and quickly to implement, which is not true of other climate solutions with similar mitigation / damage prevention potential. So there is a way in which the obstruction argument could be stronger “let’s not do this expensive infrastructure investment into clean tech now, let’s do cheap geo-engineering in 10 years if things go bad”.
3. I think the mitigation obstruction argument should not matter much either way for relatively small-scale marginal actions (such as supporting charities that advance geo-engineering research, or carbon dioxide removal, etc.). That is because those ideas exist and it seems implausible that the strength of mitigation obstruction arguments working in public discourse is very sensitive to whether we (societally, globally) spend 5 or 20 million a year working on this, either way you can point to solar geo-engineering as a reason to not act (this is related to 2, the low cost makes this more likely).
4. The worlds I am worried about the most are worlds where that mitigation obstruction argument did some work with obstructing (a) climate action and (b) action on geo-engineering, carbon dioxide removal, etc. and then we are actually not ready to deploy even if we wanted to.
5. I think this is a real risk for carbon dioxide removal solutions (hence, supporting Carbon180) as finding things that work reasonably cheaply when we want to mass deploy requires targeted innovation and search now; I am less worried about solar geo-engineering because it can be researched and deployed quickly (that it is too expensive is not a concern with solar geo-engineering, it’s all about risk trade-offs and governance) .
I think I don’t really buy your conceptual logic as the mitigation obstruction argument is about the degree to which particular solutions will be over or underestimated relative to their actual value, not about how absolutely good/cheap/fast/etc they are. When considered through that lens, it’s not clear (at least to me) what to make of distinctions between big actions and small actions or easy actions and hard actions.
Geoengineering is cheap but Halstead argues that it’s not such a bargain as was suggested by earlier estimates.
Great post, thanks! Some thoughts:
1. I agree that the mitigation obstruction argument is over-sold and not particularly strong, for many of the reasons you outline (in the real world, it seems to me that most pressure to do something on climate is not addressed by geo-engineering, so politicians face little incentive to over-emphasize geo-engineering, rather they will underemphasize it compared to potential given the demonization and the perceived strength of the obstruction argument in public discourse).
2. That said, you do seem to miss one key aspect of solar geo-engineering compared to other environmental interventions, that it is incredibly cheap and quickly to implement, which is not true of other climate solutions with similar mitigation / damage prevention potential. So there is a way in which the obstruction argument could be stronger “let’s not do this expensive infrastructure investment into clean tech now, let’s do cheap geo-engineering in 10 years if things go bad”.
3. I think the mitigation obstruction argument should not matter much either way for relatively small-scale marginal actions (such as supporting charities that advance geo-engineering research, or carbon dioxide removal, etc.). That is because those ideas exist and it seems implausible that the strength of mitigation obstruction arguments working in public discourse is very sensitive to whether we (societally, globally) spend 5 or 20 million a year working on this, either way you can point to solar geo-engineering as a reason to not act (this is related to 2, the low cost makes this more likely).
4. The worlds I am worried about the most are worlds where that mitigation obstruction argument did some work with obstructing (a) climate action and (b) action on geo-engineering, carbon dioxide removal, etc. and then we are actually not ready to deploy even if we wanted to.
5. I think this is a real risk for carbon dioxide removal solutions (hence, supporting Carbon180) as finding things that work reasonably cheaply when we want to mass deploy requires targeted innovation and search now; I am less worried about solar geo-engineering because it can be researched and deployed quickly (that it is too expensive is not a concern with solar geo-engineering, it’s all about risk trade-offs and governance) .
I think I don’t really buy your conceptual logic as the mitigation obstruction argument is about the degree to which particular solutions will be over or underestimated relative to their actual value, not about how absolutely good/cheap/fast/etc they are. When considered through that lens, it’s not clear (at least to me) what to make of distinctions between big actions and small actions or easy actions and hard actions.
Geoengineering is cheap but Halstead argues that it’s not such a bargain as was suggested by earlier estimates.